The Colonel mumbled something about spies, and apologised.
"No harm done, sir," laughed Anne, quietly. "It's nothing to some of them. Turn their search-light full glare on you just when you don't want, and never a by-your-leave—same as they done war-night! If that's war, I says to Joe, better ha done with it afore you begin, I says."
The Colonel retired indoors, doubly humiliated: he had made a fool of himself before his own parlour-maid, and in his mind he had gravely wronged Ruth Caspar.
Next day he started off for Old Town to find out if there was any way by which he could make amends to his own conscience and, unknown to her, to the woman he had maligned.
She met him with kind eyes, a little wistful.
"We're all friends now, sir," she said, as she shook hands. "Got to be, I reckon."
If it is true, as is said to-day, that old men make wars and young men pay for them, it is also true that the mothers, wives, sisters, and sweethearts of the young men bear their share of the burthen.
Ruth was left with four children and a debt.
She faced the situation as hundreds of thousands of women up and down Europe in like case were doing at that moment—quiet, courageous, uncomplaining as an animal under the blows that Life, the inexplicable, rained upon her. One thought constantly recurred to her. In her first tragedy she had stood alone against the world. Now there were millions undergoing the same experience. And she derived from that thought comfort denied to others.
There were no complications about her economic situation.