She watched other mothers’ sons hurrying forth under the battle standards slanting ahead and the flags writhing backward, and it did not comfort other women to see her; for she was a witness of the charnel their children entered. The call for three months’ volunteers had been amended to a larger demand for two years’ enlistments, and then to a larger still for three years. The failure of the North to uphold the Union bred a growing distrust of its ability to succeed, a doubt of its right to succeed, a hatred for its leaders. And always there was the terror that the next list would carry the name of the other son she had lent to the nation with no security for his return. She had Keith’s wife for companion, and they multiplied each other’s fears. Patty had the excuse of knowing what havoc there was in war. Frances had the excuse of her condition. She was carrying a child for some future war to take away from her. When Keith’s baby was born, Keith was in the travail of a battle and the baby was several weeks old before the news reached him that the wife he had not seen for nearly a year had given him a son that he might never see. Patty made the usual grandmother, fighting vainly for ideas that her daughter-in-law waived as old-fashioned, just as Patty had driven her mother frantic with her once new-fangled notions. She felt as young as she had ever felt and it bewildered her to be treated as of an ancient generation. She resented the reverence due her years a little more bitterly than the contempt. “I won’t be revered!” she stormed. “Call me a fool or a numskull; fight me, but don’t you dare treat me with deference as if I were an old ninny!” RoBards understood her mood, for he felt once more the young husband as he leaned over his grandson’s cradle and bandied foolish baby words with an infant that retorted in yowls and kicks or with gurglings as inarticulate as a brook’s, and as irresistible. One day at his office where he sat behind a redoubt of lawbooks, he glanced up to smile at a photograph of his grandchild, and caught the troubled look of a young man who was reading law in his office. “Well?” he said. “Begging your pardon, sir, there’s a young woman outside wants to see you. Says her name is—her name is—is——” RoBards snapped at him: “Speak up, man. What’s the terrible name?” “Mrs. David RoBards, Junior.” This word “Junior” wrenched an old wound open and RoBards whipped off his glasses shot with instant tears. He snarled less in anger than in anguish: “What are you saying? My poor boy had no wife.” “So I told her, sir. But she insists he did, and—and—well, hadn’t you better see her? I can’t seem to get rid of her.” RoBards rose with difficulty and stalked forth. Leaning against the rail in the outer office was a shabby mother with a babe at her frugal breast. RoBards spread his elbows wide to brace himself in the door while he fumbled for his distance glasses.