"I wish the fighting were over, and peace were come," said Muriel.
But the boys wished quite otherwise; they already gloried in the accounts of battles, played domestic games of French and English, acted garden sieges and blockades.
"How strange and awful it seems, to sit on this green grass, looking down on our quiet valley, and then think of the fighting far away in Spain—perhaps this very minute, under this very sky. Boys, I'll never let either of you be a soldier."
"Poor little fellows!" said I, "they can remember nothing but war time."
"What would peace be like?" asked Muriel.
"A glorious time, my child—rejoicings everywhere, fathers and brothers coming home, work thriving, poor men's food made cheap, and all things prospering."
"I should like to live to see it. Shall I be a woman, then, father?"
He started. Somehow, she seemed so unlike an ordinary child, that while all the boys' future was merrily planned out—the mother often said, laughing, she knew exactly what sort of a young man Guy would be—none of us ever seemed to think of Muriel as a woman.
"Is Muriel anxious to be grown up? Is she not satisfied with being my little daughter always?"
"Always."