A Mother’s Loss

An elderly man accompanying a worried looking woman was traveling by train. Presently the woman began to count on her fingers: “One, two, three,” “One, two, three,” over and over at intervals in a sing-song tone. Two girls in the same carriage tittered. One of them leaned over and whispered something to her companion. Both giggled. Each time the woman counted her fingers the girls tittered. The man seemed irritated. Suddenly he turned to them and said, “You perhaps will cease your stupid giggling when I tell you that this is my wife, and that she has lost three sons in the War. I am now taking her to an asylum.”