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'."
"We're not quite sure. The boys thought some time between nine and ten
o'clock, but they didn't seem to be at all sure about it.
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