Throughout London, nurses in hospitals set their teeth angrily over patients whom they had hoped to drag back to life, out of the horrors of shock. Other nurses, in maternity homes, could have wrung dismayed hands over this terror added to Nature's ordeal. And in operating rooms the white-coated surgeons cursed below their breath the hellish interruption that might cause a slip of the hand or the instrument and leave all care, all science vain. These things were the danger and the damage; not merely the bomb dropped at random; the crumbling masonry. These, and the mischief to countless little children, disturbed past soothing now, with tender nerves a-fret, heads gathered to their parents' shoulders. Little heads! They ought never to have been visited by such questions as punctuated the din in homes where baby voices asked, _"Was that a gun or a bomb, daddy?" ... "Where was that firing from?" ... "If a raid came right on Billy's cot, mamsie, what would you do?"_ Then there came to their ears a new sound--the gutteral, syncopated drone of twin engines--beating over the roofs. "Ah! There's one got through, then," said Mrs. Cartwright. Following on her words came the outburst of nearer gunnery, to which the whole house seemed to shake; in twos and threes--"_Brroum--brrroum!--brrroum!--brroum!--brrrroum!_" then a more ponderous crash than all. Then, a light tap at the door and a voice in two keys, calling with zest, "Mums! Are you all right? Is Mrs. Awdas? There's nothing to be frightened at really." "No; all right, Keith darling. You're all right, aren't you?" "Top-hole. I say, did you hear that last? I'm sure it was a dud shell just outside on the pavement, so----" "Keith, you're to _promise_ you won't go outside until they've gone," called his mother, starting up. "Go to your room!" "Oh ... all right, then. I'll nip out as soon as the all-clear goes though." The Master of the House pattered off down the corridor to his room. "I wonder if any others will get through tonight," said Mrs. Cartwright, listening. Golden, who had not yet lost any of her kin or seen them broken in this War, suggested that these German flyers were, anyway, brave. "So are other beasts of prey," returned the Englishwoman. Again the firing rolled away in the distance, following the raiders' course.... But a thoughtfulness seemed to have fallen upon the wakeful girl. For the first time she had given a little shiver at the sound of that receding turmoil. "Now I hope it isn't too cowardly of me, what I'm going to say," she began, suddenly, turning on her rounded elbow. "But I can't help thinking of boys flying up there in the dark, in the teeth of guns like that.... _He_ was doing it, of course, until he crashed. My Bird-boy!... He's always glad when he goes up; he was grousing to me, as you call it, yesterday, because he hadn't been off the ground for a week ... but, oh, Mrs. Cartwright! do you know, _I'm_ real glad, just for tonight, that Jack can't be up."