I'd rather be
taking them than be safe at home."
We did our best to match the laddie's spirit and be worthy of him.
But it was cruelly hard. We had lost him and found him again, and now
he was being taken from us for the second time. It was harder, much
harder, to see him go this second time than it had been at first, and
it had been hard enough then, and bad enough. But there was nothing
else for it. So much we knew. It was a thing ordered and inevitable.
And it was not many days before we had slipped back into the way
things had been before John was invalided home. It is a strange thing
about life, the way that one can become used to things. So it was
with us. Strange things, terrible things, outrageous things, that, in
time of peace, we would never have dared so much as to think
possible, came to be the matters of every day for us. It was so with
John. We came to think of it as natural that he should be away from
us, and in peril of his life every minute of every hour. It was not
easier for us. Indeed, it was harder than it had been before, just as
it had been harder for us to say good-by the second time. But we
thought less often of the strangeness of it. We were really growing
used to the war, and it was less the monstrous, strange thing than it
had been in our daily lives. War had become our daily life and
portion in Britain. All who were not slackers were doing their part--
every one.
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