Though she was all alone in the kitchen—washing potatoes, too—she didn’t appear in the least unhappy. She went over to the stove, lifted a lid, glanced in, and added two or three sticks of wood to the fire. Then she brought out a pan of apples and went down cellar after a roll of pie crust. Some one else may have made that pie crust. Elliott took it into the pantry, turned the board on the flour barrel, shook flour evenly over it from the sifter, and, cutting off one end of the pie crust, began to roll it out thin on the board. She arranged the lower crust on three pie-plates, and, going into the kitchen again, began to peel the apples and cut them up into the pies. Perhaps she wasn’t so quick about it as Laura might have been, but she did very well. The skin fell from her knife in long, thin, curly strips. After that she finished the pies off in the pantry and tucked all three into the oven. Squatting on her feet in front of the door, she studied the dial intently for a moment and hesitatingly pushed the draft just a crack open. If it hadn’t been for that momentary indecision, you might have thought that she had been baking pies all her life. Then she began to peel the potatoes.

So it was that Stannard found her. “Hello!” he said, with a grin. “Busy?”

“Indeed, I am! I’m getting dinner all by myself.”

He went through a pantomime of dodging a blow. “Whew-ee! Guess I’ll take to the woods.”

“H’m!” said Stannard, “we feel pretty smart, don’t we? Well, maybe I’ll stay and see how it pans out. A fellow can always tighten his belt, you know.”

“Aren’t you horrid!” She made up a face at him, a captivating little grimace that wrinkled her nose and set imps of mischief dancing in her eyes.

Stannard watched her as with firm motions she stripped the husks from the corn, picking off the clinging strands of silk daintily.

“Gee, Elliott!” he exclaimed. “Do you know, you’re prettier than ever!”

She dropped him a courtesy. “I must be, with a smooch of flour on my nose and my hair every which way.”

“Haven’t you? Think again, Stan, think again! What about your Cousin Elliott in a corn-field?”

Stannard slapped his thigh. “That’s so, too! I forgot that. But your hair’s all to the good, even then.”

“Stan,” warned Elliott, “you’d better be careful. You will get in too deep to wade out, if you don’t watch your step. What are you getting at, anyway? Why all these compliments?”

“Compliments! A fellow doesn’t have to praise up his cousin, does he? It just struck me, all of a sudden, that you look pretty fit.”

“Thanks. I’m feeling as fit as I look. Out with it, Stan; what do you want?”

“Why, nothing,” said Stannard, “nothing at all. Shall I take out those husks, Lot?”

“Delighted. The pigs eat ’em.” Her eyes held a quizzical light. “If you’re trying to rattle me so I shall forget something and spoil my dinner, you can’t do it.”

“What do you take me for?” He departed with the husks, deeply indignant.

In five minutes he was back. “When are you going home?”

“I don’t know. Not just yet. Your mother has too many house parties.”

“That won’t make any difference.”

“Oh, yes, it does! Her house is full all the time.”

“Shucks! Have you asked her if there’s a room ready for you?”

“Indeed I haven’t! I wouldn’t think of imposing on a busy hostess.”

“I might say something about it,” he suggested slyly.

“You will do nothing of the kind.”

“Oh, I don’t know! I’m going home myself day after to-morrow.”

Hastily Elliott set down the kettle she had lifted. “Are you? That’s nice. I mean, we shall miss you, but of course you have to go some time, I suppose.”

“It won’t be any trouble at all to speak to Mother.”

“Stannard,” and the color burned in her cheeks, “will you please stop fiddling around this kitchen? It makes me nervous to see you. I nearly burned myself in the steam of that kettle and I’m liable to drop something on you any time.”

“Oh, all right! I’ll get out. Fiddling is a new verb with you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I picked it up. Very expressive, I think.”

“Sounds like the natives.”

“Sounds pretty well, then. Did I hear you say you had an errand somewhere?”

“I’m not rattled.”

“No? Pretty good imitation, then. Oh, I’m going! Mother’s ready for you all right, though; says so in this letter. Here, I’ll stick it in your apron pocket. Better come along with me, day after to-morrow. What say?”

“I’ll see,” said Elliott, briefly.

He grinned teasingly, “Ta-ta,” and went off, leaving turmoil behind him.

The minute Stannard was out of the door Elliott did a strange thing. Reaching with wet pink thumb and forefinger into the depths of the blue apron pocket, she extracted the letter and hurled it across the kitchen into a corner.

“There!” she cried disdainfully, “you go over there and stay a while, horrid old letter! I’m not going to let you spoil my perfectly good time getting dinner.”

“What’s this?” Laura asked, spying the white envelop on the floor; “a letter?”

And all through dinner she sat and laughed and chattered away, exactly as though she weren’t conscious in every nerve of the letter in her pocket, despite the fact that she didn’t know a word it said. But she didn’t eat much: the taste of food seemed to choke her. Her gaze wandered from Mother Jess to Father Bob and back, around the circle of eager, happy, alert faces. And she felt—poor Elliott!—as though her first discontent were a boomerang now returned to stab her.

“This is Elliott’s dinner, I would have you all know,” announced Laura when the pie was served. “She did it all herself.”

Father Bob laid down his fork, looking pleased. “Did you, indeed? Now, this is what I call a well-cooked dinner.”

“I’ll give you a recommend for a cook,” drawled Stannard, “and eat my words about tightening my belt, too.”

“Some dinner!” Bruce commented.

“Please, I’d like another piece,” said Priscilla.

“Me, too,” chimed in Tom. “It’s corking.”

Laura clapped her hands. “Listen, Elliott, listen! Could praise go further?”

But Mother Jess, when they rose from the table, slipped an arm through Elliott’s and drew her toward the veranda. “Did the cook lose her appetite getting dinner, little girl?”

Mother Jess patted her arm. “Well, run away now, dear. You are not to give a thought to the dishes. We will see to them.”

At that minute Elliott almost told her about the letter in her pocket, that lay like a lump of lead on her heart. But Henry appeared just then in the doorway and the moment passed.

“Run away, dear,” repeated Aunt Jessica, and gave the girl a little push and another little pat. “Run away and get rested.”

“Why!” she cried; “why, here I am on the top of the hill!”

A low, flat rock invited her and she sat down. It was queer how different everything seemed up here. What looked large from below had dwindled amazingly. It took, she decided, a pretty big thing to look big on a hilltop.

She drew Aunt Margaret’s letter out of her pocket and read it. It was very nice, but somehow had no tug to it. Phrases from a similar letter of Aunt Jessica’s returned to the girl’s mind. How stupid she had been not to appreciate that letter!—stupid and incredibly silly.

Bess’s staccato sentences furnished a sufficiently emphatic clue. “You poor, abused dear! Whenever are you coming home? If I had an aëroplane I’d fly up and carry you off. You must be nearly crazy! Those letters you wrote were the most TRAGIC things! I shouldn’t have been a bit surprised any time to hear you were sick. Are you sick? Perhaps that’s why you don’t write or come home. Wire me the minute you get this. Oh, Elliott darling, when I think of you marooned in that awful place—”

When she thought of that she opened her eyes wide for a minute. “Oho!” she said to herself; “I guess Stan did get a rise out of me! You were easy game that time, Elliott Cameron.”

She sat on her mossy stone a long time. There wasn’t anything in the world, was there, to stand in the way of her staying her year out, the year she had been invited for, except her own silly pride? What a little goose she had been! She sat and smiled at the mountains and felt very happy and fresh and clean-minded, as though her brain had finished a kind of house-cleaning and were now put to rights again, airy and sweet and ready for use.

The postman’s wagon flashed by on the road below. She could see the faded gray of the man’s coat. He had been to the house and was townward bound now. How late he was! Nothing to hurry down for. There would be a letter, perhaps, but not one from Father. His had come yesterday. She rose after a while and drifted down through the still September warmth, as quiet and lazy and contented as a leaf.

Priscilla’s small excited face met her at the door.

“Sidney’s sick; we just got the letter. Mother’s going to camp to-morrow.”

“Sidney sick! Who wrote? What’s the matter?”

“He did. He’s not much sick, but he doesn’t feel just right. He’s in the hospital. I guess he can’t be much sick, if he wrote, himself. Mother wasn’t to come, he said, but she’s going.”

“Where are they?” she asked.

“In Mumsie’s room,” said Priscilla. “We’re all helping.”

Elliott mounted the stairs. She had to force her feet along, for they wished, more than anything else, to run away. What should she say? She tried to think of words. As it turned out, she didn’t have to say anything.

Laura was the only person in Aunt Jessica’s room when they reached it. She sat in a low chair by a window, mending a gray blouse.

“Elliott’s come to help, too,” announced Priscilla.

It was all so matter-of-fact and quiet and natural that Elliott didn’t know what to make of it. She managed to gasp, “I hope Sidney isn’t very sick.”

“He thinks not,” said Laura, “but of course Mother wants to see for herself. She is telephoning Mrs. Blair now about the Ladies’ Aid. They were to have met here this week. Mother thinks perhaps she can arrange an exchange of dates, though I tell her if Sid’s as he says he is, they might just as well come.”

Elliott, who had been all ready to put her arms around Laura’s neck and kiss and comfort her, felt the least little bit taken aback. It seemed that no comfort was needed. But it was a relief, too. Laura couldn’t sit there, so cool and calm and natural-looking, sewing and talking about crab-apple juice and Ladies’ Aid, if there were anything radically wrong.

Then Aunt Jessica came into the room and said that Mrs. Blair would like the Ladies’ Aid, herself, that week; she had been wishing she could have them; and didn’t Elliott feel the need of something to eat to supplement her scanty dinner?

That put to rout the girl’s last fears. She smiled quite naturally and said without any stricture in her throat: “Honestly, I’m not hungry. And I am going to put a clean collar in your blouse.”

“What should I do without my girls!” smiled Mother Jess.

It was after supper that the telegram came, but even then there was no panic. These Camerons didn’t do any of the things Elliott had once or twice seen people do in her Aunt Margaret’s household. No one ran around futilely, doing nothing; no one had hysterics; no one even cried.

“Have they sent for us?”

He nodded. “You’d better take the sleeper. The eighty-thirty from Upton will make it.”

“Can you—?”

“Not with things the way they are here.”

Then they all scattered, to do the things that had to be done. Elliott was helping Laura pack the suit-case when she had her idea. It really was a wonderful idea for a girl who had never in her life put herself out for any one else. Like a flash the first part of it came to her, without thought of a sequel; and the words were out of her mouth almost before she was aware she had thought them.

“You ought to go, Laura!” she cried. “Sidney is your twin.”

“Why don’t you, Laura? Can’t you possibly?”

The other shook her head. “Mother is the one to go. If we both went, who would keep house here?”

For a fraction of a second Elliott hesitated. “I would.”

The words once spoken, fairly swept her out of herself. All her little prudences and selfishnesses and self-distrusts went overboard together. Her cheeks flamed. She dropped the brush and comb she was packing and dashed out of the room.

A group of people stood in the kitchen. Without stopping to think, Elliott ran up to them.

Father Bob looked at the girl for a minute in silence. Then he spoke: “Well, I guess you’re right. I will look after the chickens.”

“I’ll mix their feed,” said Gertrude; “I know just how Laura does it—and I’ll do the dishes.”

“I’ll get breakfasts,” said Bruce.

“I’ll make the butter,” said Tom. “I’ve watched Mother times enough. And helped her, too.”

“I’ll see to Prince and the kitty,” chimed in Priscilla, “and do, oh, lots of things!”

“I’ll be responsible for the milk,” said Henry.

“I’ll keep house,” said Elliott, “if you leave me anything to do.”

“And I’ll help you,” said Harriet Gordon.

“Are you sure, dear, you want to do this?” Mother Jess asked Elliott.

“Perfectly sure,” the girl answered. She felt excited and confident, as though she could do anything.

“It won’t be easy.”

“I know that. But please let me try.”

“And there are the Gordons,” said Mother Jess, half to herself.

“Yes,” echoed Elliott, “there are the Gordons.”

When the little car ran up to the door to take the two over to Upton and Mother Jess and Laura were saying good-by, Laura strained Elliott tight. “I’ll love you forever for this,” she whispered.

Of course Elliott never could have done it without the Gordons. Elliott and Harriet made the crab-apple juice into jelly, Mrs. Gordon sent in bread and cookies, and both mother and daughter stood behind the girl with their skill and experience, ready to be called on at a moment’s notice.

“Just send for us any time you get into trouble or want help about something,” said Mrs. Gordon over the telephone. “One of us will come right up. Most likely it will be Harriet. I’m so cumbersome, I can’t get about as I’d like to. Large bodies move slowly, you know.”

“They couldn’t all happen so,” was Henry’s conclusion. “Now, could they? Gee! and I’ve thought some of those folks were pokes!”

“So have I,” said Elliott, feeling very much ashamed of her hasty judgments.

“You never know till you get into trouble how good people are,” was Father Bob’s verdict.

Gertrude fingered a doughnut ruefully. “I want it, but I’m almost ashamed to eat it. I’ve thought such horrid things of that old Mrs. Gadsby that made ’em.”

“They’re good,” said Tom. “Mrs. Gadsby knows how to make doughnuts, if she has got a tongue in her head! Say, but I’d as soon have thought old Allen would send us doughnuts as the Gadsby.”

“Enoch Allen?” demanded Henry; “the old fellow that lives at the foot of the hill? Go tell that to the marines!”

“I don’t know where he lives,” said Elliott, “but he certainly said his name was Enoch Allen.”

Bruce chuckled. “Mother Jess’s chickens have come home to roost, all right.”

“What did she ever do for Enoch Allen?” asked Tom.

But even with competent advisers within call and all the aids that came in the shape of “Mother Jess’s chickens,” and with the best family in the world all eagerness to be helpful and to “carry on” during Laura and Mother Jess’s absence, Elliott found that housekeeping wasn’t half so simple as it looked.

It had come just as they were finishing dinner, for the postman was late. Father Bob had cut it open, while every one looked eager and hopeful. Mother Jess had written the day before that the doctors thought Sidney was better; there had been a telegram to that effect, too. Father Bob read Laura’s letter quite through before he opened his lips. It wasn’t a long letter. Then he said: “The boy’s not so well, to-day.—Bruce, we must finish the ensilage. Come out as soon as you’re through, boys. Tom, I want you to get in the tomatoes before night. We’re due for a freeze, unless signs fail.” Not another word about Sidney. And he went right out of the room.

“What does she say?” whispered Gertrude, dropping her fork so that it rattled against her plate. Gertrude was always dropping things, but this time she didn’t flush, as she usually did, at her own awkwardness.

Elliott picked up the letter Father Bob had left beside her plate. She dreaded to unfold the single sheet, but what else could she do, with all those pairs of anxious eyes fixed on her? She steadied her voice and read slowly and without a trace of expression:

The room was very still for a minute. Elliott kept her eyes on the letter, to hide the tears that filled them. Sidney was going to die; she knew it.

Slowly, silently, one after another, they all got up from the table. The boys filed out into the kitchen, washed their hands at the sink, and still without a word went about their work. Gertrude and Priscilla began mechanically to clear the table. A plate crashed to the floor from Gertrude’s hands and shattered to fragments. She stared at the pieces stupidly, as though wondering how they had come there, took a step in the direction of the dust-pan, and, suddenly bursting into tears, turned and ran out of the room. Elliott could hear her feet pounding up-stairs, on, on, till they reached the attic. A door slammed and all was quiet.

Down in the kitchen Elliott and Priscilla faced each other. Great round drops were running down Priscilla’s cheeks, but she looked up at Elliott trustfully. And then Elliott failed her. She knew herself that she was failing. But it seemed as though she just couldn’t keep from crying. “Oh, dear!” she sighed. “Oh, dear, isn’t everything just awful!” Then she did cry.

And over Priscilla’s sober little face—Elliott wasn’t so blinded by her tears that she failed to see it—came the queerest expression of stupefaction and woe and utter forlornness. It was after that that Elliott heard Priscilla sobbing in the china-closet.

The world was topsyturvy and would never get right again.

Instead of going for Priscilla she went for a dust-pan and brush and collected the fragments of broken china. Then she began to pile up the dishes, but, after a few futile movements, sat down in a chair and cried again. It didn’t seem worth while to do anything else. So now there were three girls crying all at once in that house and every one of them in a different place. When at last Elliott did look in the closet Priscilla wasn’t there.

The appearance of that usually spotless kitchen had a queer effect on Elliott. She saw so many things needing to be done at once that she didn’t do any of them. She simply stood and stared hopelessly at the wreck of comfort and cleanliness and good cheer.

“Hello!” said Bruce at the door. “Want an extra hand for an hour?”

“I thought you were cutting ensilage,” said Elliott. It was good to see Bruce; the courage in his voice lifted her spirits in spite of her.

“I’ve left a substitute.” The boy glanced into the stove and started for the wood-box.

“Oh, dear! I forgot that fire. Has it gone out?”

“Not quite. I’ll have it going again in a jiff.”

He came back with a broom in his hands.

“Let me do that,” said the girl.

“Oh, all right.” He relinquished the broom and brought out the dish-pan. “Hi-yi, Stan, lend a hand here!”

Stannard wiping dishes, and with Bruce Fearing! The sight was so strange that Elliott’s broom stopped moving. The two boys at the dish-pan chaffed each other good-naturedly; their jokes might have seemed a little forced, had you examined them carefully, but the effect was normal and cheering. Now and then they threw a word to the girl and the pile of clean dishes grew under their hands.

Elliott’s broom began to move again. Something warm stirred at her heart. She felt sober and humble and ashamed and—yes, happy—all at once. How nice boys were when they were nice!

Then she remembered something.

“Oh, Stan, wasn’t it to-day you were going home?”

It was a different-looking kitchen the boys left half an hour later and a different-looking girl.

Bruce lingered a minute behind Stannard. “We haven’t had any telegram,” he said. “Remember that. And as for things in here, I wouldn’t let ’em bother me, if I were you! You can’t do everything, you know. Keep cool, feed us the stuff folks send in, and let some things slide.”

“Mother Jess doesn’t let things slide.”

“Mother Jess has been at it a good many years, but I’ll bet she would now and then if things got too thick and she couldn’t keep both ends up. There’s more to Mother Jess’s job than what they call housekeeping.”

He hesitated a minute. “Well, call it morale. That suggests the thing.”

“Don’t you think,” Elliott suggested, “it is time we girls washed our faces and made ourselves pretty?”

“I left you all the dishes to do.” Gertrude’s voice was muffled by the pillow. “I—I just couldn’t help it.”

“That’s all right. They’re done now. I didn’t do them, either. Let’s go down-stairs and wash up.”

“I don’t want to be pretty,” Priscilla objected, continuing to rock. Gertrude neither moved nor spoke again.

What should Elliott do? She remembered Bruce.

“We haven’t had any telegram, you know,” she said. Nobody spoke. “Well, then, we were three little geese, weren’t we? Not having had a telegram means a lot just now.” Priscilla stopped rocking.

“I’m going to believe Sidney will get well,” Elliott continued. It was hard work to talk to such unresponsive ears, but she kept right on. “And now I am going down-stairs to put on one of my prettiest dresses, so as to look cheerful for supper. You may try whether you can get into that blue dress of mine you like so much, Trudy. I’m going to let Priscilla wear my coral beads.”

“The pink ones?” asked Priscilla.

“The pink ones. They will be just a match for your pink dress.”

“I don’t feel like dressing up,” said Gertrude.

Elliott felt like clapping her hands. She had roused Trudy to speech.

“Then wear something of your own,” she said stanchly. “It doesn’t matter what we wear, so long as we look nice.”

Elliott tried one last argument. “I think Mother Jess would like to have us do it for Father Bob and the boys’ sake—to help keep up their courage.”

Priscilla bounced out of the rocker. “Will it help keep up their courage for us to wear our pretty clothes?”

“I had a notion it might.”

“Let’s do it, Trudy. I—I think I feel better already.”

Gertrude sat up on the horsehair sofa. “Maybe Mother would like us to.”

“I’m sure she’d like us to keep on hoping,” said Elliott earnestly. “And it doesn’t matter what we do, so long as we do something to show that’s the way we’ve made up our minds to feel. If you can think of any better way to show it than by dressing up, Trudy—”

Three girls, as pretty and chic and trim as nature and the contents of their closets could make them, sat down to supper that night. It was not a jolly meal, but the girls set the pace, and every one did his best to be cheerful and brave.

Half-way through supper Stannard laid down his fork to ask a question. “What’s happened to your hair, Trudy?”

“Elliott did it for me. Do you like it?”

Stannard nodded. “Good work!”

Father Bob, his attention aroused, inspected the three with new interest in his sober eyes. He said nothing then, but after supper his hand fell on Elliott’s shoulder approvingly.

“Well done, little girl! That’s the right way. Face the music with your chin up.”

Elliott felt exactly as though some one had stiffened her spine. The least little doubt had been creeping into her mind lest what she had done had been heartless. Father Bob’s words put that qualm at rest. And, of course, good news would come from Sidney in the morning.

But courage has a way of ebbing in spite of one. It was dark and very cold when a forlorn little figure appeared beside Elliott’s bed.

“I can’t go to sleep. Trudy’s asleep. I can hear her. I think I am going to cry again.”

Elliott sat up. What should she do? What would Aunt Jessica do?

“Come in here and cry on me.”

Priscilla climbed in between the sheets and Elliott put both arms around the little girl. Priscilla snuggled close.

“I tried to think—the way you said, but I can’t. Is Sidney—” sniffle—“going to die—” sniffle—“like Ted Gordon?”

“No,” said Elliott, who a minute ago had been afraid of the very same thing. “No, I am perfectly positive he is going to get well.”

Just saying the words seemed to help, somehow.

Priscilla snuggled closer. “You’re awful comforting. A person gets scared at night.”

“A person does, indeed.”

“Not so much when you’ve got company,” said Priscilla.

The warmth of the little body in her arms struck through to Elliott’s own shivering heart. “Not half so much when you’ve got company,” she acknowledged.

Sure enough, in the morning came better news. Father Bob’s face, when he turned around from the telephone, told that, even before he opened his lips.

“Sidney is holding his own,” he said.

You may think that wasn’t much better news, but it meant a great deal to the Camerons. “Sidney is holding his own,” they told every one who inquired, and their faces were hopeful. If Father Bob had any fears, he kept them to himself. The rest of the Camerons were young and it didn’t seem possible to them that Sidney could do anything but get well. Last night had been a bad dream, that was all.

The next morning’s message had the word “better” in it. “Little” stood before “better,” but nobody, not even Father Bob, paid much attention to “little.” Sidney was better. It was a week before Mother Jess wrote that the doctors pronounced him out of danger and that she and Laura would soon be home. Meanwhile, many things had happened.

You might have thought that Sidney’s illness was enough trouble to come to the Camerons at one time, but as Bruce quoted with a twist in his smile, “It never rains but it pours.” This time Bruce himself got the message which came from the War Department and read:

You are informed that Lieutenant Peter Fearing has been reported missing since September fifteenth. Letter follows.

The Camerons felt as badly as though Peter Fearing had been their own brother.

“Maybe he’s a prisoner,” Tom suggested.

“Perhaps he had to come down in a wood somewhere,” Henry speculated, “and will get back to our lines.”

“The government makes mistakes sometimes,” Stannard said. “There was a woman in Upton—” He went on with a long story about a woman whose son was reported killed in France on the very day the boy had been in his mother’s house on furlough from a cantonment. There were a great many interesting and ingenious details to the story, but nobody paid much attention to them. “So you never can tell,” Stannard wound up.

“No, you never can tell,” Bruce agreed, but he didn’t look convinced. Something, he was quite sure, was wrong with Pete.

“What if they see it in the papers?” Elliott asked.

“They’re busy. Ten to one they won’t see it, since it isn’t head-lined on the front page. Wait till we get the letter.”

“How soon do you suppose the letter will come?” Gertrude wished to know.

“‘Letter follows,’” Henry read from the yellow slip which the postman delivered from the telegraph office. “That means right away, I should say.”

“Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t,” said Tom and then he had a story to tell. It didn’t take Tom long, for he was a boy of fewer words than Stannard.

Morning, noon, and night the Camerons speculated about that telegram. They combed its words with a fine-toothed comb, but they couldn’t make anything out of them except the bald fact that Pete was missing.

If you think they let it go at that, you are very much mistaken. Where the fact stopped the Cameron imaginations began, and imaginations never know where to stop. The less actual information an imagination has to work on, the busier it is. The Camerons hadn’t any more imagination than most people, but what they had grew very busy. It fairly amazed them with its activity. If you think that this was silly and that they ought to have chained up their imaginations until the promised letter arrived, it only shows that you have never received any such telegram.

“What did I tell you?” interrupted Tom. “He’s a prisoner.”

An airplane had been reported as falling in flames near this spot, but whether it was Lieutenant Fearing’s machine or another, no data was as yet at hand to prove. The writer begged to remain, etc.

No, that letter only opened up fresh fields for Cameron imaginations to torment Cameron hearts. Nobody had happened to think before of Pete’s machine catching fire.

“Gee!” said Henry, “if that plane was his—”

“There’s no certainty that it was,” said Bruce, quickly.

All the Camerons, you see, knew perfectly well what happens to an aviator whose machine catches fire.

“If that machine was Pete’s,” Father Bob mused, “Hun aviators may drop word of him within our lines. They have done that kind of thing before.”

“Wouldn’t Bob cable, if he knew anything more than this letter says?” Gertrude questioned.

“I expect Bob’s waiting to find out something certain before he cables,” said Father Bob. “Doubtless he has written. We shall just have to wait for his letter.”

“Wait! Gee!” whispered Henry.

“Both the boys’ letters were so awfully late, in the summer!” sighed Gertrude. “However can we wait for a letter from Bob?”

Then she discovered that she and Bruce were alone in the room. He was sitting at Mother Jess’s desk, in as deep a brown study as she had been. The girl’s voice roused him.

Elliott looked up quickly. “Especially cut up?”

“I think so. Oh, there wasn’t anything definite between her and Pete—nothing, at least, that they told the rest of us. But a fellow who had eyes—” He left the sentence unfinished and walked over to Elliott’s chair. “You know, I told you,” he said, “that I shouldn’t go into this war unless I was called. Of course I’m registered now, but whether or not they call me—if Pete is out of it—and I can possibly manage it, I’m going in.”

A queer little pain contracted Elliott’s heart. And then that odd heart of hers began to swell and swell until she thought it would burst. She looked at the boy, with proud eyes. It didn’t occur to her to wonder what she was proud of. Bruce Fearing was no kin of hers, you know.

“You do help me,” he said.

“I?” Her eyes lifted in real surprise. “How can I?”

“By being you.”

His hand had only to move an inch to touch hers, but it lay motionless. His eyes, gray and steady and clear, held the girl’s. She gave him back look for look.

“I am glad,” she said softly and her face was like a flower.

Bruce was out of the house before Elliott thought of the thing she could do for him.

Whatever it was, it put her in a great hurry. As fast as she had dashed to the kitchen she now ran to the front hall, but the third step of the stairs halted her.

“Elliott Cameron,” she declared earnestly, “I do believe you have lost your mind! Haven’t you any sense at all? And you a responsible housekeeper!”

Perhaps it wasn’t the first time a whirlwind had ever struck the Cameron farmhouse. Elliott hadn’t a notion that she could work so fast. Her feet fairly flew. Bed-covers whisked into place; dusting-cloths raced over furniture; even milk-pans moved with unwonted celerity. But she left them clean, clean and shining.

Priscilla jumped up. “I do, unless Trudy wants to more.”

Gertrude shook her head. “I’m going to put up tomatoes,” she said, “the rest of the ripe ones.”

“Don’t you want help?”

“Not a bit. Tomatoes are no work, at all.”

Elliott dashed up-stairs. In a whirl of excitement she pinned on her hat and counted her money. No matter how much it cost, she meant to say all that she wanted to.

Her cheeks were pink and her dimples hard at work playing hide-and-seek with their own shadows, when she cranked the little car. Everything would come right now; it couldn’t fail to come right. Priscilla hopped into the seat beside her and they sped away.

But the next day passed, and the next, and the day after that, and still no cable from Father.

It was very bewildering. At first Elliott jumped every time the telephone rang, and took down the receiver with quickened pulses. No matter what her brain said, her heart told her Father would send good news. She couldn’t associate him with thoughts of ill news. Of course, her brain said there was no logic in that kind of argument, and that facts were facts; and in a case like Pete’s, fathers couldn’t make or mar them. Her heart kept right on expecting good tidings.

It didn’t do any good to try to run from that sensation; there was nowhere to run. It blocked every avenue of thought, a sinister shape of dread. The only help was in keeping very, very busy. And even then one couldn’t stop one’s thoughts traveling, traveling, traveling along those fearful paths.

“Perhaps we would better send for them to come home from Camp Devens,” Father Bob suggested one day. He threw out his remark at the supper-table, which would seem to address it to the family at large, but he looked straight at Elliott.

“Oh, no,” she cried, “don’t send for them!” But she couldn’t keep a flash of joy out of her eyes.

“Sure you’re not getting tired?”

“Certain sure!”

It disappointed her the least little bit that Uncle Bob let the suggestion drop so readily. And she was disappointed at her own disappointment. “Can’t you ‘carry on’ at all?” she demanded of herself, scornfully. “It was all your own doing, you know.” But how she did long at times for Aunt Jessica!

But there were hours when the cover lifted a little. No girl, not the bravest, could avoid such altogether. Elliott didn’t think herself brave, not a bit. She knew merely that the thing she had to do couldn’t be done if there were many such hours.

“I didn’t mean—any one to—find me.”

“Shall I go away?”

She shook her head. “I can’t stand it!” she wailed. “I simply can’t stand it!” And she sobbed as though her heart would break.

Bruce sat down beside the girl on the hay and patted the hand nearest him. He didn’t know anything else to do. Her fingers closed on his convulsively.

“I’m an awful old cry-baby,” she choked at last. “I’ll behave myself, in a minute.”

“No, cry away,” said Bruce. “A girl has to cry sometimes.”

After a while the racking sobs spent themselves. “There!” she said, sitting up. “I never thought I’d let a boy see me cry. Now I must go in and help Trudy get supper.”

She dabbed at her eyes with a wet little wad of linen. Bruce plucked a clean handkerchief from his pocket and tucked it into her fingers.

“Yours doesn’t seem quite big enough for the job,” he said.

She took it gratefully. She had never thought of a boy as a very comforting person, but Bruce was. “Oh, Bruce, you know!”

“Yes, I know.”

“It’s so—so lonely. Dad’s all I’ve got, of my really own, in the world.”

He nodded. “You’re gritty, all right.”

“Why, Bruce Fearing! how can you say that after the way I’ve acted?”

“That’s why I say it.”

“And you’re not.”

She stared at him. “Is being scared and trying to cover it up what you call grit?”

“The grittiest kind of grit.”

For a sophisticated girl she was singularly naïve, at times. He watched her digest the idea, sitting up on the hay, her chin cupped in her two hands, straws in her hair. Her eyes were swollen and her nose red, and his handkerchief was now almost as wet as her own. “I thought I was an awful coward,” she said.

A smile curved his firm lips, but the steady gray eyes were tender. “I shouldn’t call you a coward.”

She shook herself and stood up. “Bruce, you’re a darling. Now, will you please go and see if the coast is clear, so I can slide up-stairs without being seen? I must wash up before supper.”

“I’d get supper,” he said, “if I didn’t have to milk to-night. Promised Henry.”

She shook her head positively. “I’ll let you do lots of things, Bruce, but I won’t let you get supper for me—not with all the other things you have to do.”

“Oh, all right! I dare you to jump off the hay.”

“Down there? Take you!” she cried, and with the word sprang into the air.

Beside her the boy leaped, too. They landed lightly on the fragrant mass in the bay of the barn.

“Oh,” she cried, “it’s like flying, isn’t it! Why wasn’t I brought up on a farm?”

There was a little choke still left in her voice, and her smile was a trifle unsteady, but her words were ready enough. In the doorway she turned and waved to the boy and then went on, her head held high, slender and straight and gallant, into the house.