All this Susan talked over with Mrs. McGuire; and there was always, too, the hushed discussion as to what would happen if, after all, it failed, and Keith came home hopelessly blind.
"But even that ain't the worst thing that could happen," maintained Susan stoutly. "I can tell you Keith Burton ain't goin' to let a little thing like that floor him!"
Mrs. McGuire, however, did not echo Susan's optimistic prophecies. But Mrs. McGuire's own sky just now was overcast, which perhaps had something to do with it. Mrs. McGuire had troubles of her own.
It was the summer of 1914, and the never-to-be-forgotten August had come and passed, firing the match that was destined to set the whole world ablaze. Mrs. McGuire's eldest son John—of whom she boasted in season and out and whom she loved with an all-absorbing passion—had caught the war-fever, gone to Canada, and enlisted. Mrs. McGuire herself was a Canadian by birth, and all her family still lived there. She was boasting now more than ever about John; but, proud as she was of her soldier boy, his going had plunged her into an abyss of doubt and gloom.
"He'll never come back, he'll never come back," she moaned to Susan.
"I can just feel it in my bones that he won't."
"Shucks, a great, strong, healthy boy like John McGuire! Of course, he'll come back," retorted Susan. "Besides, likely the war'll be all over with 'fore he gets there, anyhow. An' as for feelin' it in your bones, Mis' McGuire, that's a very facetious doctrine, an' ain't no more to be depended upon than my flour sieve for an umbrella. They're gay receivers every time—bones are. Why, lan' sakes, Mis' McGuire, if all things happened that my bones told me was goin' to happen, there wouldn't none of us be livin' by now, nor the sun shinin', nor the moon moonin'. I found out, after awhile, how they DIDN'T happen half the time, an' I wrote a poem on it, like this:
Trust 'em not, them fickle bones,
Always talkin' moans an' groans.
Jest as if inside of you,
Lived a thing could tell you true,
Whether it was goin' to rain,
Whether you would have a pain,
Whether him or you would beat,
Whether you'd have 'nuf to eat!
Bones was give to hold us straight,
Not to tell us 'bout our Fate."
"Yes, yes, I s'pose so," sighed Mrs. McGuire. "But when I think of
John, my John, lyin' there so cold an' still—"
"Well, he ain't lyin' there yet," cut in Susan impatiently. "Time enough to hunt bears when you see their tracks. Mis' McGuire, CAN'T you see that worryin' don't do no good? You'll have it ALL for nothin', if he don't get hurt; an' if he does, you'll have all this extra for nothin', anyway,—that you didn't need till the time came. Ever hear my poem on worryin'?"
Without waiting for a reply—Susan never asked such questions with a view to having them answered—she chanted this: