Mary fought with all her strength, employed all the resources for persuading she had developed. It was pitiful how few they were, how defenseless she was. She who had always had what she wanted, she whom a father first and then a husband had delighted to serve. She had no weapons for fighting, she realized, because she had never needed them. To ask had been all she had ever done, and here was their lad, her son, failing her, defying her, unhearing when she cried, disobeying when she ordered. She was horrified by the hopelessness of her resistance, and shocked no less by the knowledge that Tom himself did not agree with her; that he even rejoiced in the boy's daring. There were women, too, who said, "How proud you must be, Mary." The boy had gone early in 1916. She heard from him regularly, but she was bitter in her heart, and for the first time in her life did not find full satisfaction in her busy days of planning and buying for herself and household, in keeping immaculate her luxurious home, in entertaining and being entertained in the lively Sabinsport group in High Town. In her grief Mary had had but one real comforter--Katie Flaherty. It was Katie's pride in her soldier that had persuaded Dick, soon after Young Tom left, that she might at least help reconcile Mary Sabins to the boy's adventure. And Katie asked nothing better than to talk. "Don't you be worryin' about your by, Mrs. Sabins," she said. "Don't I know all about it, and me a widder and him me only one? But I'm that proud of him now I can't sleep o' nights sometimes. The pluck of him--to get up in the night and go, fearin' I wouldn't let him. Sure, and your by never did the likes o' that. He told you square and you could say good-by and get his picture and go to the train and see him off. What'd you done if you'd got up in the mornin' and found him gone and nothin' but a letter left? God help me, Mrs. Sabins, it was the first time since he was laid in me arms the hour after he was born, that I hadn't waked him--and sometimes bate him to get him up to breakfast. To call him, and call him and get no answer, to go scoldin' in to shake him and find he'd niver been in the bed at all, and a letter on his pillow--no, ma'am, you hadn't that. You saw him off. An' he's doin' fine over there. Think of the good he'll be doin', haulin' the boys that gets hurt to the doctor--that's what Mr. Dick says he doin'. And fine work it is. Don't you think I'm easier in my mind for knowin' there's ambulancers like him to pick up my Mikey if a dirty German sticks him? Sure I am. You ought to be that proud not to be mother to a coward." And so on and on Katie talked, and somehow Mary Sabins always was for a time less bitter after hearing Katie.