"Does your knee hurt you much now?" Josephine inquired, looking at him sympathetically.
"No," he replied, "not much—thank you."
"The doctor says he will be able to do without his crutch very soon," remarked May.
"But I shall always be lame," the boy said; "and I call that jolly hard lines for a fellow who'd made up his mind to be a soldier!"
"Yes," agreed Josephine, adding: "Perhaps you won't mind so much by and by—you'll think of something else you'd like to be."
"Oh, that's how May talks!—it maddens me. I've got the fighting spirit—I'm not a milksop! How would your father feel if he couldn't do anything for his king and country?—couldn't fight for them any more?"
Josephine considered a minute, looking thoughtful, then she said—
"I expect he'd feel—oh, dreadfully sorry, but he'd know it was God's will and he'd try not to make a trouble of it—it wouldn't be fighting the good fight to do that."
"The good fight?" questioned Donald, looking puzzled.
"The good fight of faith, you know," answered Josephine. "Oh, don't you understand what I mean? It's the hardest fight of all, father says, but we've all got to fight it if we're Christians. It's for truth, and honour, and love, and everything that's good against all that's false and selfish and bad. It's just being on the side of Jesus—being soldiers of the Cross, you know!"