“D—­n this war!” began one letter to her mother.  “We had influenza aboard coming over and three nurses died and were buried at sea.  Also, one of our convoy foundered in a storm; I saw men clinging to the wreck as she went down.

“Can it be that I once lived in that funny little town where they make a fuss about dead people—­flowers and a casket and a clergyman and careful burial?  With us it’s something to get out of the way at once.  And life has always been this, and I never knew it, even if we did take the papers at home.  Ha, ha!  Yes, I can laugh, even in the face of it.  ’Life is real, life is earnest’—­how that line comes back to me with new force!”

A succeeding letter from a base hospital somewhere in France spelled in full certain words that had never before polluted Winona’s pen.  Brazenly she abandoned the seemly reticence of dashes.

“Damn all the war!” she wrote; and again:  “War is surely more hellish than hell could be!”

“Mercy!  Can the child be using such words in actual talk?”, demanded Mrs. Penniman of the judge, to whom she read the letter.

“More’n likely,” declared the judge.  “War makes ’em forget their home training.  Wouldn’t surprise me if she went from bad to worse.  It’s just a life of profligacy she’s leadin’—­you can’t tell me.”

“Nonsense!” snapped the mother.

“’And whom do you think I had a nice little visit with two days ago?  He was on his way up to the front again, and it was our Wilbur.  He’s been in hot fighting three times already, but so far unscathed.  But oh, how old he looks, and so severe and grim and muddy!  He says he is the worst-scared man in the whole Army, bar none.  He thought at first he would get over his fright, but each time he goes in he hates worse and worse to be shot at, and will positively never come to like it.  He says the only way he can get over being frightened is to go on until he becomes very, very angry, and then he can forget it for a time.  You can tell by his face that it would be easy to anger him.

“’But do not think he is cowardly, even if habitually frightened, because I also talked with his captain, who is an outspoken man, and he tells me that Wilbur is a regular fighting so-and-so.  These were his very words.  They are army slang, and mean that he is a brave soldier.  A young man, a Mr. Edward Brennon from Newbern, a sort of athlete, came over with him, and they have been constantly together.  I did not see this Mr. Brennon, but I hear that he, too, is gallantly great, and also a regular fighting so-and-so, as these rough men put it in their slang.