Madge still held to her hope. God would make a wind of reason to pass over the earth. He would not smite again his people.
“I wish poor dear Sam could have been kept out of it,” said Flossie. She wiped her eyes and finished her tea.
Joan had arranged to leave on the Monday. She ran down to see Mary Stopperton on the Saturday afternoon. Mr. Stopperton had died the year before, and Mary had been a little hurt, divining insincerity in the condolences offered to her by most of her friends.
“You didn’t know him, dear,” she had said to Joan. “All his faults were on the outside.”
She did not want to talk about the war.
“Perhaps it’s wrong of me,” she said. “But it makes me so sad. And I can do nothing.”
She had been busy at her machine when Joan had entered; and a pile of delicate white work lay folded on a chair beside her.
“What are you making?” asked Joan.
The little withered face lighted up. “Guess,” she said, as she unfolded and displayed a tiny garment.
“I so love making them,” she said. “I say to myself, ‘It will all come right. God will send more and more of His Christ babies; till at last there will be thousands and thousands of them everywhere; and their love will change the world!’”