Page:War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy, John Luther Long, 1913.djvu/104

WAR looking back and is happier—so happy that we all had a nice time—even the hireland.

Well, I hadn't wanted to go, but, after all, it was fine. I fell in the Ice-Spring, and a snake bit Jon. Otherwise it was a good picnic.

Coming back, it was just like all picnics—all was tired and we lay on our backs in the yellow straw and let the hireland drive. The three youngsters, with little help from me, were happy as happy, and sang a lot of the old songs that took me back to my wife in her grave: Annie Laurie, Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still, Home Sweet Home, and so on, until we begun to get near home. Then every little while Evelyn would rise and look down the valley—until about that same mile from home, when she shivered a bit after looking, and slid down into the straw, cuddled up between Jonathan and Dave, and began to cry.

"What makes you cry, dear?" asks Dave.

She said nothing.

"Often," says nice old Jonthy, always ready with oil on the water, "women cry for—joy!" 88