The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1918-10-12
Continued from page 20 !.
THE BOYS OF THE HOUSE.

Lelt the mouse lonely when they did
not come; she began to wonder how,
when the time came for her to leave
this place where at first she had felt
eastaway, she could endure that they
should look for her and not find her.
No one else apparently knew of
their presence. The ghosts the peo-
pie had attributed to the house, much
less pleasant ghosts, had no exist
| ence. She was sure of that after a
couple of years of occupation. They
would have frightened her; not these
radiant boys-yes, they were radiant.
In that third long winter they shone
on her in those glimpses with@a most
benignant light, their presence became
a reinsurance. She thought that if
the old hideous ghosts the people had
believed in were to come, these young
knights would be flashing sword, in
hand on either side of her to protect
her. -
That was the ,wintefswhen her elder
boy was in deadly peril, and the
younger was coming near the point to
go. The elder boy was in the East,
threatened as much by pestilence as
by fire and sword. Someone had said
to her: Every man who stays long
enough, unless he is disabled and
sent home not to return, is killed at
last" s,a ts .-
She did not know if it were true or
not. She heard it with faint cold
wonder that anyone should say the
like to the mother of son out there
amid the deadly rivers, with the sud
| den agenizing diseases that lay in
wait for him if he went scratches
from shell or sword. %.S
Some time, midway of this winter
the young ghosts deserted her. AS
she went up and down the house,
shaking if the dogs barked, lest there
should be a telegram, she looked in
vain for them in the places where
they had sshone upon her like a light
in mist. No more when she knelt at
prayer did they kneel beside her.
They had deserted the house. And
now the least lonely place in the win
try house was the oratory, where the
pictured faces of cher boys as she
called them-rnany one came to her
for comfort in these days because
somehow the tale of her comfort had
got abroad-brought her reinsurance
when the wind cried around the house
like a banshee, and her heart was
heavy and cold at what might be hap
pening far away.
Then, midway of great frost, there
came news, not the news she dreaded,
but the news she had hoped for. He
was wounded. He had fought great
fight; he was to be decorated. These
things she knew afterwards. When
the news came that he had been
wounded and would be sent home she
felt that it was answer to her prayers.
He would be out Of it, out of that hell
of sickness and death; she would
have him to nurse back to health.
Curiously enough it did not occur to
her that he might die of his wounds.
He had been two years from her
arms. Now that he was coming home
her heart sang like birds. s
The most wonderful May that was
ever known had come on the tracks
of dreadful spring, and the prim-
roses had replaced the snow-since
| they had so short a time to stay there
was never such a blossoming when
she brought him home. She had gone
as far as she could to meet him.
NJhof die esxyc oh folf ~ L3o ,sorl,4
of him-this gaunt, serious suffering
man to be her boy, her little boy, as
she had called him in her tender
thoughts, though his brother was still
her littlest one, her "baby'-she hid
in her heart. His eyes had leaped at
her. out of their deep sockets. "By
JoEe, mummie, how pretty and how
young you look" he said.
He was there still--her own boy,
gay and full of singing, the soul of
him just the same only hurt-to be
coaXed back to what he once was.
She brought him home to the prim-
roses. He lay out among them on an
invalid couch, and the scent of them,
he said, chung to everything, the soft
wind came with the salt of the ocean
in it and the days were hot; gorse and
pine gave out delicious pungent oders,
and the color crept back to his cheeks.
He srniled4-he had been very slow in
smiling and after while he talked;
but by, that time all the primroses had
'focked back to efairylard for another
year, and the white pinks had come
and the forget-me-nots we're like a
sheet of sky under the apple trees
She had not asked him about his
wound nor about the battle But one
day when he said at last that he was
better, he talked of his own accord
and his talk flowed on quietly, like
the tapping of wave, even when he
talked of dreadful things.
& have been wanting to tell you,'
he said, "of the two to whom owe
my life. They, came to my help when
I was left behind, wounded. You
know was two nights and day I'M
der the. Turkish fire between the
trenches. The odd thing was that
they had been fighting beside me in
the advance, and one was an Irish
guardsman and the other was in the
Dublins. There were no DubIins there
and no Irish guards and remember