“Justin—take care! You will take care? Don’t bother about V.C.s. and things.”
He laughed at that. She could do so little for him, but at least she could always make him laugh.
The train carried away Justin laughing.
She watched it dwindle to a toy and vanish in the tunnel, and still stood watching till the track wavered and danced, as she fought her blinding tears and petitioned the skies for Justin.
“Keep him safe, God. O God, keep him safe. Let him come back to me. O God, let him come back to me.”
One voice of a thousand thousand, uplifted daily, hourly, in that cry—how shall it be preferred?
Yet I believe, I cannot help believing, that in the fulness of time he will come back to her.
Well, Collaborator—do you like it? You are sitting so silently in your big chair, and your knitting has dropped to the floor——
Collaborator, don’t look so solemn! They’re not real people! They’re not real troubles! Only marionettes that we have set a-jig-jigging up and down our mantelpiece to make us laugh o’ nights, and forget the unending war. And now we will send them jigging up and down printed pages, to do the same, if they can, for other poor folk.