The war was a great leveler of rank, bringing together in one common cause the high and the low, the rich and the poor, and in no one was this more strikingly seen than in the case of Rose Mather, who, utterly forgetful of the days when, as Rose Carleton, of Boston, she would scarcely have deigned to notice such as the Widow Simms, now sought in so many ways to comfort the stricken woman, going every day to her humble home, and once coaxing her to spend a day at the Mather mansion, together with Susan, whom Rose secretly thought a little insipid and dull. Susan’s husband was alive, and in the full flush of prosperity; so Susan did not need sympathy, but the widow did, and Rose got her up to the “Great House,” as the widow called it, and ordered a most elaborate dinner, with soups and fish, and roasts and salads, prepared with oil, which turned the widow’s stomach, and ices and chocolate, and Charlotte-russe, and nuts and fruit, and coffee served in cups the size of an acorn, the widow thought, as very red in the face and perspiring at every pore, she went through the dreadful dinner which lasted nearly three hours, and left her at its conclusion, “weak as water, and sweatin’ like rain,” as she whispered to Annie, who took the tired woman for a few moments into her own room, and listened patiently to her comments upon the grand dinner which had so nearly been the death of her. Susan, on the contrary, enjoyed it. It was her first glimpse of life among the very wealthy, and while her mother-in-law was wondering “how Annie could stand such doins every day, and especially that ’bominable soup, and still wus _salut_,” Susan was thinking how she should like to live in just such style, and wondering if, when John came home with his wages all saved, she could not set up housekeeping somewhat on the Mather order. At least she would have those little coffees after dinner; though she doubted John’s willingness to sit quietly until the coffee was reached. It was a long day to the widow, and the happiest part of it was the going home by the cemetery, where she stopped at Isaac’s grave, and bending over the turf, murmured her tender words of love and sorrow for the boy who slept beneath. There was a plan forming in the widow’s mind, and it came out at last to Annie, who was visiting her one day. The hospitals were full to overflowing, and the cry all along the lines was for more help to care for the sick and dying, and the widow was going as nurse, either in the hospital or in the field. She should prefer the latter, she said, “for only folks with _pluck_ could stand it there.” And Annie encouraged her to go, and even talked of going too, but the first suggestion of the plan brought such a storm of opposition from Rose, that for a little time longer Annie yielded, resolving, however, that ere long she would break away and take her place where she felt that she could do more good than she was doing in Rockland.