Thyrza Beatup sat beside the willow pond at the corner of the Street, on the trunk of a fallen tree. In her arms she held her baby, asleep in a shawl. She felt warm and content and rather sleepy. In her pocket was Tom’s last letter from France, but she did not read it, for she knew it by heart.... “I think of you always, you dear little creature, you and baby—even when my mind is full of the things out here, and this great battle which is seemingly the biggest there’s ever been.” ... “How I wonder when I’ll get another leave. I reckon baby ull have grown a bit and you’ll be just the same.” ... “I shut my eyes and I can see your face; reckon I love you more every time I think of you and I think of you day and night, so you can guess all the love that makes.” ... Tender phrases floated in and out of her mind, and then she smiled as she remembered a funny story Tom had told her about a chap in the A.S.C.... She drew the baby closer into her arms, looking down at his little sleeping face, which she thought was growing more and more like Tom’s. She drooped her eye-lids and in the mist of her lashes half seemed to see Tom’s face there in the crook of her elbow, where it had so often been, turning towards her breast. Poor Tom! his head was not so softly pillowed these nights ... and as suddenly she pictured him lying on the bare, foul ground, his head on his haversack, his cheeks unshaved, his body verminous, his limbs all aching with cold and stiffness—he, her man, her darling, whom she would have had rest so sweetly and so cleanly, with nothing but sweetness and comfort for the body that she loved—then a sudden flame of rebellion blazed up in her heart, and its simplicity was scarred with questions—Why was this terrible War allowed to be? How was it that women could let their men go to endure its horrors? Did anyone in England ever yet know what it was these boys had to suffer? Oh, stop it, stop it! for the sake of the boys out there, and for the boys who have still to go ... save at least a few straight limbs, a few unbroken hearts. She clenched her hands, and little Will moaned against her breast, and as she felt his little fists beating against her, the hard mood softened, and she bent over him with soothing words and caresses—words of comfort for herself as well as for her child. “Don’t cry, liddle Will—daddy ull come back—daddy’s thinking of us. He’s out there so that you ull never have to go; he bears all that so that you may never have to bear it.” A thick grape red had trickled into the west like a spill of wine. The afternoon had suddenly crimsoned into the evening, and ruddy lights came slanting over the fields, deepening, reddening, so that the willows were like flames, and the willow pond was like a lake of blood.... The night wind rose, and Thyrza shivered. “We mun be gitting hoame, surelye,” and she stood up, pulling the shawl over the baby’s face.