After ten hours over the washtub, she would change her sud-soaked dress, get the boys their supper, clean and dry the dishes, scrub the two little chaps and put them to bed; then, after eight o'clock, sit down at the window where the street light shone in and read about those "devilish Huns," her moist, strong face, to which clung her brown hair, stringy from sweat, working and changing expression with feelings of sympathy and patriotism. After she had read all about the war and the Red Cross, but nothing else, she got out a ball of gray yarn and needles and knitted till 10:30. She had promised to knit two pairs of socks a week for the Limerick Red Cross Unit. Then after her prayers, which were wholly intercessory, for her boys and their daily bread and the motherless boys in Flanders, her day's work was done. She went to the big bed by the window and kissed her three boys, then to her cot in the corner and slept the sound sleep of the faithful and the true. She had not been to a picture show in three years; had never been in an automobile, nor to the derby, nor the State Fair, but each Sunday morning walked in to the Cathedral to early mass. She was always at home, except when she made the trip to the grocery, or to The Puritan to deliver the wash, or to the knitting unit to exchange the pair of well-knitted socks (on the tops of which she always made a narrow border of red, white and blue) for more yarn. She gave the boys twenty cents each every Saturday night to go to the picture show and for peanuts. They knew all the knot-holes in the ball park fence and all the home players by name and sight. They argued and sometimes fought over the umpire's decision. The Government selected and named a training camp site, out the Preston Street car line, Camp Taylor. It was soon rumored around Limerick how they were burning down practically new buildings to make immediate room for barracks and were paying unheard-of prices for labor. Every one who owned a saw, hammer and square and who could hit the hammer with the nail, called himself a carpenter and journeyed thither. The paper boys became water boys at three dollars per day. So Tim gave up his paper stand and became a water boy. Mrs. O'Flannagan, going down to the store for a pair of shoes and taking three dollars to pay for them, the price she had been paying for the same shoe for ten years, was forced to return home for three dollars more, as she was told: "Last week the price was raised to $5.98." Everywhere she went to buy some simple necessity she was told of a sudden similar raise. The husbands and sweethearts of the few remaining colored washladies having procured jobs at the camp and the women themselves receiving liberal offers at other occupations, deserted the washtub. The ladies of The Puritan were forced to get Mrs. O'Flannagan or buy an electric washer and iron or surreptitiously do the family wash in the bathtub and dry it in the kitchenette.