The Nest Builder by Hale, Beatrice Forbes-Robertson

Through the trees dropped the insistent sound of a baby's cry to its mother. She rose; the heavy clouds of memory fell away. The past was gone; she lived for the future, and the future was in her children.

* * * * *

The next morning Mary had just bathed the baby, and was settling her in her carriage, when the Sparrow, who, seated on the porch with Elliston, was engaged in cutting war maps from the papers and pasting them in an enormous scrapbook, gave a warning cough.

"Here comes Mr. McEwan," she whispered, in the hushed voice reserved by her simple type for allusions to the afflicted.

"Oh, poor dear," said Mary, hurrying across the lawn to meet him. She felt more than ever sympathetic toward him, for Mac's wife had died in a New Hampshire sanitarium only a few weeks before, and all his hopes of mending her poor broken spirit were at an end. Reaching the gate, she gave an involuntary cry.

McEwan was stumbling toward her almost like a drunken man. His face was red, his eyes bloodshot; a morning paper trailed loosely from his hand.

"Mary," he cried, "I came back from the station to see ye--hae ye heard, my girl?"

"Wallace!" she exclaimed, frightened, "what is it? What has happened?" She led him to a seat on the porch; he sank into it unresisting. Miss Mason pushed away her scrapbook, white-faced.

"The Lusitania! They were na' saved, Mary. There's o'er a thousand gone. O'er a hundred Americans--hundreds of women and little bairns, Mary--like yours--Canadian mithers and bairns going to be near their brave lads --babies, Mary." And the big fellow dropped his rough head on his arms and sobbed like a child.

"Oh, Wallace; oh, Wallace!" whispered Mary, fairly wringing her hands; "it can't be! Over a thousand lost?"

"Aye," he cried suddenly, bringing his heavy fist down with a crash on the wicker table, "they drooned them like rats--God damn their bloody souls."

His face, crimson with rage and pity, worked uncontrollably. Mary covered her eyes with her hands. The Sparrow sat petrified. The little Elliston, terrified by their strange aspects, burst into loud wails.

"There, darling; there, mother's boy," crooned Mary soothingly, pressing her wet cheek to his.

"Little bairns like that, Mary," McEwan repeated brokenly. Mary gathered the child close into her arms. They sat in stunned horror.

"Weel," said McEwan at last, more quietly. "I'll be going o'er to enlist. I would ha' gone long sine, but that me poor girl would ha' thocht I'd desairted her. She doesna' need me now, and there's eno' left for the lad. Aye, this is me call. I was ay a slow man to wrath, Mary, but now if I can but kill one German before I die--" His great fist clenched again on the table.

"Oh, don't, dear man, don't," whispered Mary, with trembling lips, laying her cool hand over his. "You're right; you must go. But don't feel so terribly."

His grip relaxed; his big hand lay under hers quietly.