"Yes, sir," she answered above the roar of machinery, "I had two boys at the front, but — they're a-laying out there somewhere, killed by the same shell. I've got a photo of their graves — very neat they look, though bare, and I'll never be able to go and tend 'em, y'see — nor lay a few flowers on 'em. So I'm doin' this instead — to help the other lads. Yes, sir, my boys did their bit, and now they're gone their mother's tryin' to do hers."
Thus I stood and talked with this sad-eyed, white-haired woman who had cast off selfish grief to aid the Empire, and in her I saluted the spirit of noble motherhood ere I turned and went my way.
But now I woke to the fact that my companions had vanished utterly; lost, but nothing abashed, I rambled on between long alleys of clattering machines, which in their many functions seemed in themselves almost human, pausing now and then to watch and wonder and exchange a word with one or other of the many workers, until a kindly works-manager found me