“I can’t help being glad my brothers are little boys,” said Molly Chester, with a catch in her voice. “Father’s nearly fifty, so of course he’s too old. I’m afraid I’m selfish, but it is a great comfort.”
“Both my brothers will go,” said Olive Gerard, quietly. “I am glad to have them, but of course it’s going to be hard for Mother and me.” Olive was seventeen; a tall girl, with a sweet face, and gentle gray eyes. She was a great favorite with the younger pupils, who all looked up to her and admired her very much, and instinctively both Amy and Angel drew a little closer to her, and Amy slipped a trembling hand into hers.
“I wish I could be brave,” she whispered, “but I know I am an awful coward. Jack always told me I was a coward, because I was afraid of snakes, and mice, and horrid creeping things, but, oh, it’s so terrible to think of having people we love go away to be killed or wounded! I’m afraid I can never be brave enough to bear it as I ought.”
“Oh, yes, you will,” said Olive, smiling; “we shall all learn to be brave. Think of how brave the English and French women have been. An English friend of my mother’s wrote that all her three boys were at the front, and that, hard as it was to part from them, there was one thing that would have been much harder, and that would have been if they hadn’t wanted to go.”
“Oh, Jack wants to go,” cried Amy, with shining eyes. “He’s been wanting to for more than a year.” And, suddenly she was conscious of a sensation of pride in her big, handsome brother, that, with all her love for him, she had never felt before.
“Where are you going, Gretel?” Geraldine Barlow inquired, as they all moved off in the direction of the big gymnasium.
“To Fräulein’s room,” Gretel answered. “I think I’ll see if there is anything I can do for her. She said she had a headache.”
Geraldine looked troubled. She was a year younger than Gretel, whom she liked very much, but she had never been quite able to understand her friend’s intimacy with the German teacher.
“Don’t you think perhaps she might prefer being by herself?” she suggested.
Gretel shook her head.