"Don't you care?" he demanded almost crossly, with his eyes intent on the triple curve just ahead.
"Of course I care," I answered. "If you were a truly own brother I couldn't feel any worse about your going off into all that danger, and I couldn't be any prouder of you. And I think that under the circumstances we might be allowed to put another star on our service flag, one for you as well as for Father. You belong to us more than anyone else now."
"Will you do that?" he asked quickly, and with such eagerness that I saw he was both touched and pleased. "It makes a tremendous difference to a fellow to feel that he's got some sort of family ties—that he isn't just floating around in space like a stray balloon. It's a mighty lonesome feeling to think that there's nobody left to miss you or care what becomes of you."
"Oh, we'll care all right," I promised him. "We'll be a really truly family to you, and we'll miss you and write to you and knit for you."
He was in the midst of the triple curve now, with a machine honking somewhere ahead, but he turned to flash a pleased smile at me and we came very near to a collision. He had to veer to one side so suddenly that we were nearly thrown out. For two years he has been so eager to go overseas that I hadn't an idea he would have any homesick qualms when the time came, but to find that he was hanging on to each hour as something precious made me twice as sorry to see him go as I would have been otherwise.
As we came back into town he glanced at his watch again but said nothing until I leaned over to look too.
"How many hours now?" I asked. "Only sixty-one and a half," he answered, "and they'll whiz by like a streak of lightning." From then on I began counting them too.
There was a birthday letter from Barby waiting for me when I got home, such a dear one that I took it off to my room to read by myself. The package she mentioned sending was evidently delayed. As I sat in front of my mirror, brushing my hair before going down to supper, I thought what a very, very different birthday this was from the one we had planned for my eighteenth anniversary. Still it had been a happy day. I felt repaid for my wild rush every time I recalled Babe's face when she saw herself for the first time in her wedding gown. Her delight was pathetic, and her gratitude will be something to remember always, that and the fact that I was a bridesmaid for the first time—and a Maid of Honor at that.
Suddenly I came to myself with a start to find myself with my hair down over my shoulders and my brush held in mid air, while I gazed at something in the depths of the mirror. Something that wasn't there. The altar and the bridal party before it, and the Best Man looking across at me with that grave, wistful expression that was like a leave-taking. And then his smile as our eyes met. It seems strange that just recalling a little thing like that should make me glowingly happy, yet in some unaccountable way it did.
Judith and George Woodson came up after supper. I was almost sorry they did, for Richard had asked me to play the "Reverie" that he always asks Barby for. He was stretched out on the leather couch with his hands clasped under his head, looking so comfortable and contented it seemed a pity to disturb him. He'll think of that old couch and the times he's lain on it listening to Barby play, many a time when he's off there in range of the enemy's guns.