At length they gave it up, called the children and went back to the others. At the dock they found a launch filled with visitors bringing news--great news and glorious. A big naval battle had been fought in the North Sea! Ten British battleships had been sunk, but the whole German fleet had been destroyed! For the first time war took on some colour. Crimson and purple and gold began to shoot through the sombre black and grey. A completely new set of emotions filled their hearts, a new sense of exultation, a new pride in that great British Navy which hitherto had been a mere word in a history book, or in a song. The children who, after their manner, were quickest to catch and to carry on to their utmost limits the emotions of the moment, were jubilantly triumphant. Some of them were carrying little Union Jacks in their hands. For the first time in their lives that flag became a thing of pride and power, a thing to shout for. It stood for something invisible but very real. Even their elders were not insensible to that something. Hitherto they had taken that flag for granted. They had hung it out of their windows on Empire Day or on Dominion Day as a patriotic symbol, but few of them would have confessed, except in a half-shamed, apologetic way, to any thrill at the flapping of that bit of bunting. They had shrunk from a display of patriotic emotion. They were not like their American cousins, who were ever ready to rave over Old Glory. That sort of emotional display was un-Canadian, un-British. But to-day somehow the flag had changed. The flag had changed because it fluttered in a new world, a new light fell upon it, the light of battle. It was a war flag to-day. Men were fighting under it, were fighting for all it represented, were dying under its folds, and proudly and gladly.
“And all the men will go to fight, your father and my father, and all the big boys,” Ethel heard a little friend confide to Isabel.
“Hush, Mabel,” said Ethel sharply. “Don't be silly.”
But the word had been spoken and as a seed it fell upon fertile soil. The launch went off with the children waving their flags and cheering. And again upon those left upon the dock the shadow settled heavier than before. That was the way with that shadow. It was always heavier, thicker, more ominous after each interlude of relief.