“Come on, Julie, let’s go to the picture show this evening,” she suggested. “I can’t,” Julie returned. “I’ve got to get on with this Red Cross sweater.” “Well,” the other sighed, “I reckon I oughtn’t to tempt you away from your duty, with our men givin’ their lives over there. Ain’t it awful about that Mrs. Webster’s boy!” “Awful,” Julie assented. “It’s the third one of our Stag County young men to go. That boy from Whifen that was killed early in the war, an’ that young feller that was in the Marines, and now Mrs. Webster’s son. They said when they got the word his mother just fell right over on the floor, an’ was dead for five hours. He was her only boy, and the baby child; an’ now him dead ’way off there--one of our men dead over in France--ain’t it awful?” “Yes, awful,” Julie repeated, hurrying nervously on with her knitting. “Well--and did you hear about the Chapin boy?” Aunt Sadie continued. “No. What about him? What Chapin boy?” Julie asked, startled. “Why, you know those Chapins that live out on the Easter Road, ’bout five miles from town? It’s a little log-house, sits back from the road in a right pretty yard.” “Oh, yes, I know. What about the boy?” Julie questioned. “Well, they had to send him back from camp. They couldn’t do one thing with him. He just cried all the time.” “_Cried_ all the time?” “Um--’m.” Mrs. Johnson firmed her lips to a straight line, and nodded her head up and down heavily. “Yes, they couldn’t do one thing with him.” “But--but what was the matter with him?” Julie persisted. “I don’t know. He just cried all the time. Lost his nerve, I reckon. They sent him back home. They said he wasn’t no good to them. His father feels terrible; says he always was a nervous kind of a boy, an’ his mother humored him along till she just ruined him.” “Oh, the poor boy!” Julie cried. “Well my Lord, Julie! Just s’pose all our men were like that; what would Uncle Sam do?” “Oh, of course, I know. Only--how awful it was for him!” “Well, I’m mighty glad he ain’t _my_ son,” Aunt Sadie retorted. “It’ll be a thing people’ll throw up against him all his life. Folks won’t forget it in a hurry. Well,”--she dragged her large figure up out of the plush rocker,--“If you won’t go with me to the picture show, I reckon I’ll just have to go ask Mis’ Bixby; she’s better’n no company.” She went, and after a little Julie heard her and Elizabeth Bixby setting forth. Julie sat on alone, knitting under the light, her mind filled with distressful thoughts about the Chapin boy, who found camp so awful and the prospect of death in France so overpowering, that he could do nothing but cry. “How dreadful!” Julie thought. “What was the matter with him? What made him go to pieces like that? Other men stood up against it; what was the matter with the Chapin boy? Oh, the poor boy! The poor thing! How frightful to give way like that, with all the camp to see!”