Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/306

296 soon,—his two years were nearly up, and why should not Tilly be asked then to take Mrs. Sharp's place?

Into the placid, monotonous and innocent dreams of these lives in the Provincetown light-house, the first news of the first days of our great war broke like a thunder-bolt; nobody in all these United States felt the shock, felt the strain, felt the power of the war, as did lonely and inexperienced women in remote places. Every word of news from battles was pondered by them and wept over; long intervals of no news, harder still to bear, were endured in the meek silence which is born in women who live in solitude. Tilly and her mother were not exceptions to this. They were transformed by the excitement of the time. The melodeon was shut, and for a few weeks Tilly did nothing but implore her father to go to town for news; and on days when he could not go, she watched on the rocks for the sight of somebody who might tell her the latest tidings. At last, one Sunday, when the minister called from the pulpit for all the women of the church to meet in the meeting-house the next day, to sew, to scrape lint, and to roll bandages, Mrs. Bennet could stand inaction no longer.

"I tell you what it is, Tilly," said she. "We 'll go home and cook up a lot of things for your father, and then we 'll come over here, and just stay an' work till this box is sent off. He can get along without us for a few days. It 's the least he can do."