The next morning Mary had just bathed the baby, and was settling her in her carriage, when the Sparrow, who, seated on the porch with Elliston, was engaged in cutting war maps from the papers and pasting them in an enormous scrapbook, gave a warning cough.
“Here comes Mr. McEwan,” she whispered, in the hushed voice reserved by her simple type for allusions to the afflicted.
“Oh, poor dear,” said Mary, hurrying across the lawn to meet him. She felt more than ever sympathetic toward him, for Mac's wife had died in a New Hampshire sanitarium only a few weeks before, and all his hopes of mending her poor broken spirit were at an end. Reaching the gate, she gave an involuntary cry.
McEwan was stumbling toward her almost like a drunken man. His face was red, his eyes bloodshot; a morning paper trailed loosely from his hand.
“Mary,” he cried, “I came back from the station to see ye—hae ye heard, my girl?”
“Wallace!” she exclaimed, frightened, “what is it? What has happened?” She led him to a seat on the porch; he sank into it unresisting. Miss Mason pushed away her scrapbook, white-faced.
“The Lusitania! They were na' saved, Mary. There's o'er a thousand gone. O'er a hundred Americans—hundreds of women and little bairns, Mary—like yours—Canadian mithers and bairns going to be near their brave lads—babies, Mary.” And the big fellow dropped his rough head on his arms and sobbed like a child.
“Oh, Wallace; oh, Wallace!” whispered Mary, fairly wringing her hands; “it can't be! Over a thousand lost?”
“Aye,” he cried suddenly, bringing his heavy fist down with a crash on the wicker table, “they drooned them like rats—God damn their bloody souls.”