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88
OUR GIRLS

the paper containers which, being charged with the explosives, are put into the shells.

The girls liked Lil, who was a little educated lady among them, though she gave herself no airs, and Lil liked the girls, partly because they had all known Will. Months passed, and Lil, being about to become a mother, was not turned off, as too often happens, but put to the light work of gauging and examining. At last she had to leave and a group of the girls took her home to the house of her mother, with whom she lived. The baby was born; it was a boy; and during the first days there was great happiness in Lil's home, and collections in the shop to buy bunches of flowers for her. But then came a thunderbolt—a message from the War Office that Private Will was "missing," probably dead. Nobody dare tell Lil; she had had a bad time and was weak and it would kill her. And there she was, with her pretty pink and white face on the pillow, smiling like sunshine,