"I haven't been able to sleep all night," she said, her hands fluttering nervously in her lap. "Ever since Betty told me the boys were going this morning I couldn't think of anything but just that one thing."
"I am sorry I told you then until this morning," cried Betty, reproaching herself. "I didn't know it was going to make you feel bad."
"Oh, it wasn't your fault, dear," the old woman hastened to reassure her. "And it really didn't make me feel bad—not for them, anyway. They're lucky to be able to fight—even to die—for a country like ours. Only," she paused, and some of the light died out of her eyes, "I couldn't help wishing—"
"Yes," they prompted gently.
"That my Willie boy could have gone with them," she said, the words so soft that they had to lean close to her to catch them. "I would have been so proud of him."
The girls were silent, not knowing how to comfort the poor old woman.
"Perhaps," said Amy at last, scarcely knowing what she was saying, yet trying so hard to comfort, "he is a soldier somewhere. There are so many thousands of them, you know."
Mrs. Sanderson turned to her with such fierce emotion in her eyes that the girl unconsciously shrank back.
"If I thought that," she said, her voice tense, her hands clasped so tightly in her lap that the knuckles showed white, "I'd be willing, glad, to die the next minute. If I could just see my boy in uniform—even if I knew I could never see him again—" her voice trailed off, and once more the light died out of her eyes.
"But, of course, that's impossible," she said wearily. "If my boy had been alive, he'd have come back to me. But that wasn't why I came in to see you so early," she added after a moment, straightening up with that indomitable courage that had won, first, the girls' admiration, then their love. "I jest wanted to find out when 'twas the boys was startin'."