"I could take it no other way. Is not my mother giving God-speed to her sons? Is not Judy encouraging Kent? Is not Nance not only sending Andy but going with him? Who am I that I should say you shall and you shan't do things for your country?"
"But you see, dear girl, there are the children to take care of in case--in case--in case I should--should--well--stump my toe."
"I can take care of them as my mother did of all of us. My father died when I was a tiny child and still my mother raised me. But don't stump your toe. Pick up your feet when you walk--and--and----"
Here Molly came very near shedding the tears that she felt must be shed sooner or later, but she was determined that it should be later and that her soldier boy should not see them. She jumped up and offered to race him to the house where Katy was laying the tea table on the porch.
Edwin knew Molly too well not to understand that this gaiety was nothing but camouflage to conceal emotions that she was too brave to show.
"She will think that I have married well," was her gay rejoinder.
"And what does my Mildred think when I tell her her daddy is going to be a soldier?" he asked as he held the little girl close in his arms.
Mildred had been busy with a tiny hoe and shovel on a patch of ground given over to her tender ministrations. Her hands were very grubby and her face not much better, but Edwin seemed not to mind the general griminess of his daughter.
"Oh, I say bully for Daddy! An' I bet if Dodo'll wake up, he'd say he was a-goin', too. Boys is so rombustious."
And now we must leave Molly Brown and her College Friends at the momentous hour when their country is plunged in a great and righteous war. What the future holds for them is as much a mystery as what it holds for any of us. One thing is sure: Molly is doing her duty,--doing it cheerfully and bravely. Around her are college girls and more college girls, each one doing her bit. And so the fields are ploughed, the crops are planted and gathered. Fruit and vegetables are preserved and canned. The men and boys are training for the trenches, but the women and girls are in training, too.
Molly often thinks of that moment when she stood sniffing the up-turned mould, with her husband standing near listening to her as she recited the lines from Masefield; and now as the days multiply she finds comfort in Masefield's ending to "The Everlasting Mercy":