"It is something, but it isn't much," said his small daughter, obstinately. "I don't want to love the world, Daddy. I want to love Derry--" The Doctor groaned. "I thought I had escaped him, for a day." "You will never escape him," was the merciless rejoinder, but she kissed him to make up for it. In spite of the fact of her separation for the moment from her lover, she had enjoyed the ride. There had been much wind, and a little snow on the way. But now the air was clear, with a sort of silver clearness--the frozen river was gray-green between its banks, there were blue shadows flung by the bare trees. As they passed the College, a few black-frocked fathers and scholastics paced the gardens. Jean wished that Derry were there to see it all. It was to her a place of many memories. Most of the summers of her little girlhood had been spent there, with now and then a Christmas holiday. The house did not boast a heating plant, but there were roaring open fires in all the rooms, except in the Connollys' sitting room, which was warmed by a great black stove. The Connollys were the caretakers. They occupied the left wing of the house, and worked the farm. They were both good Catholics, and Mrs. Connolly looked after the little church at the crossroads corner, where the good priests came from the College every week to say Mass. She was a faithful, hard-working, pious soul, with her mind just now very much on her two sons who had enlisted at the first call for men, and were now in France. She talked much about them to Jean, who came into the kitchen to watch her get supper. The deep, dark, low-ceiled room was lighted by an oil lamp. The rocking chair in which Jean sat had a turkey-red cushion, and there was another turkey-red cushion in the rocking chair on the other side of the cookstove. They ate their meals on the table under the lamp. It was only when guests were in the house that the dining room was opened. The Doctor and Jim Connolly were at the barn, where were kept two fat mules, a fat little horse, a fat little cow, and a pair of fat pigs. There were also a fat house dog, and a brace of plump pussies, for the Connollys were a plump and comfortable couple who wanted everything about them comfortable, and who had had little to worry them until the coming of the war. Yet even the war could not shake Mrs. Connolly's faith in the rightness of things. "I was glad to have our country get into it, and to have my sons go. If they had stayed at home, I shouldn't have felt satisfied." "Didn't it nearly break your heart?" Mrs. Connolly, beating eggs for an omelette, shook her head. "Women's hearts don't break over brave men, Miss Jean. It is the sons who are weak and wayward who break their mothers' hearts--not the ones that go to war."