Mrs. Winters looked at him with a new expression on her face. "I have fallen down, then," she said, "on one part of my job—I have brought into the world and cared for no children. All my life—and I am now forty years of age—has been given to making a home pleasant for one man. I have been a housekeeper and companion for one person. It doesn't look exactly like a grown woman's whole life-work, now, does it?"
"Don't talk foolishly, Nettie," he said; "you suit me."
"That's it," she said quickly; "I suit you—but I do not suit the church women, the Civic Club women, the Hospital Aid women, the Children's Shelter women; they call me a slacker, and I am beginning to think I am."
"I would like to know what they have to do with it?" he said hotly; "you are my wife and I am the person concerned."
Without noticing what he said, she continued: "Once I wanted to adopt a baby, you remember, when one of your patients died, and I would have loved to do it; but you said you must not be disturbed at night and I submitted. Still, if it had been our own, you would have had to be disturbed and put up with it like other people, and so I let you rule me. I have never had any opinion of my own."
"Nettie, you are excited," he said gently; "you are upset, poor girl, about my going away—I don't wonder. Come out with me; I am going to speak at a recruiting meeting."
Her first impulse was to refuse, for there were many things she wanted to think out, but the habit of years was on her and she went.
The meeting was a great success. It was the first days of the war, when enthusiasm seethed and the little town throbbed with excitement. The news was coming through of the destruction and violation of Belgium; the women wept and men's faces grew white with rage.
Dr. Winters's fine face was alight with enthusiasm as he spoke of the debt that every man now owes to his country. Every man who is able to hold a gun, he said, must come to the help of civilization against barbarism. These dreadful outrages are happening thousands of miles away, but that makes them none the less real. Humanity is being attacked by a bully, a ruffian,—how can any man stay at home? Let no consideration of family life keep you from doing your duty. Every human being must give an account of himself to God. What did you do in the great day of testing? will be the question asked you in that great day of reckoning to which we are all coming.
When he was through speaking, amid the thunderous applause, five young men walked down to the front and signified their intention of going.