They knocked on the door, but, receiving no answer, pushed it open and stepped inside the room. The old lady was sitting in exactly the same position as when Betty had seen her from the car, almost an hour before.
She glanced up, a little startled when they spoke to her, and half rose to her feet. She looked dazed and very old and drawn. With a little cry of compassion, Betty ran over to her and gently forced her back into her chair.
"Did we startle you?" she asked anxiously. "We knocked, but you didn't answer, and we came right in. I'm sorry—"
"You needn't be, dearie." The old eyes twinkled and the old hand was very gentle as it patted Betty's cheek reassuringly. "I'm always glad to see you and I've told you to come right in any time. I was thinking very hard, I guess, and that's why I didn't hear you."
"Then we may stay a little while?" said Betty, relieved. "But please tell us if we'll be a bother," she added hastily, as the old woman turned once more to the window.
"No, no, I was hoping you would come," said the latter so eagerly that Betty knew her impulse had been a correct one. The old woman had wanted some one—some one who understood—to pour out her heart to.
"It was wonderful just to sit here and watch those boys who went, an' I've been thinkin' of it," she said, after a brief silence. "Only, somethin' inside o' me, I guess 'twas my heart, kept bleedin' an' cryin' out that my boy should have been among them—my little brown-eyed Willie who used to sit out in the sun readin' every minute he could get. I can see him now, sittin' there, jest as if 'twas yesterday—" Her voice trailed off, and in a silence eloquent with sympathy the girls waited for her to go on.
"But I wanted to tell those boys too," she cried, straightening up with sudden fire, "that my Willie wasn't only a reader an' as bright as a dollar,—he could fight, too. He'd have made a soldier to be proud of.
"It wouldn't be near so bad," she added, turning to the girls with such a depth of tragedy in her eyes that their hearts bled for her, "if I could only be sure o' his bein' dead. It's the heartbreak of not knowin' that's goin' to kill me in the end!
"But there," she said, catching herself up as though ashamed of the outburst, "seems like I talk to you little ladies more'n I ever talked to anybody else in all my life. Seems like it's jest been bottled up inside o' me so long it's jest got to come out.