“What?” demanded Helen.
“I have wanted to hear Ruth laugh. And we all need to laugh. Why, we are becoming a trio of old fogies!”
“Speak for yourself, Master Tom,” pouted his sister.
“I do. And for you. And certainly Ruth is about as cheerful as a funeral mute. What we all need is some fun.”
“Oh, Tom, I don’t feel at all like ‘funning,’” sighed Ruth.
“You be right, Sonny,” interjected Aunt Alvirah, who sometimes forgot that Tom, as well as the girls, was grown up. She rose from her chair with her usual, “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! You young folks should be dancing and frolicking——”
“But the war, Auntie!” murmured Ruth.
“You’ll neither make peace nor mar it by worriting. No, no, my pretty! And ’tis a bad thing when young folks grow old before their time.”
“You’re always saying that, Aunt Alvirah,” Ruth complained. “But how can one be jolly if one does not feel jolly?”
“My goodness!” cried Tom, “you were notoriously the jolliest girl in that French hospital. Didn’t the poilus call you the jolly American? And listen to Grandmother Grunt now!”