A little while ago when he had been so sure that he could enlist as a flyer, she had shrunk from the thought of his going to war.

Before that, when he had lain unconscious for so many days there in the bedroom behind her; when a trained nurse had stood guard and would not let Mary V so much as look at Johnny, and the doctor had spoken glibly of hope, when his eyes told her how little hope there was, she had suffered terribly.

She had thought that she had touched the depths of worry over Johnny--and she had not begun to know the meaning of the word.
She lay a small, huddled heap of heartache, shrinking from her own thoughts, shrinking from the sight of every one, dazed with terror of what she might hear if any one spoke.

Into this nightmare jingled the telephone bell.

Mary V gave a faint scream and put her hands over her ears.
"There, there, baby--I'll answer it," her mother's voice came soothingly, and Mary V shrank farther down in the hammock cushions.
"Oh--why--land alive! Just a minute--hold the line," she heard her mother say in a strange, flustered voice.