"Well, honey! Not much like home, eh? Do you think you can stand it for three months? Jove!—if she hasn't got her suitcase and is unpacking it already!"
Patricia was indeed frantically flinging her belongings about.
"Oh, it's jolly!" she replied, over her shoulder. "But you're right about it's not being much like home. I felt as if I'd just expire if I couldn't see things strewn around in a sort of careless and cosy way, as if people really lived here!" She rose suddenly from her kneeling posture before the suitcase, ran across the room and thumped both stiff pillows on the beds, knocking them a trifle awry. "There! Now they look more like real beds that you sleep in and less like advertisements in the back of a magazine!" she laughed. "The sitting-room's a little better, with that big table and the pretty reading-lamp and the comfortable chairs. But do let's get a lot of papers and magazines and books at once, and have them lying all around as we do at home. Mother would be scandalized—she's always picking them up after us," she went rattling on, and then stopped abruptly, lips quivering, eyes bright with sudden tears.
"If mother could only be with us!" she sobbed.
"Now, honey, don't—" the captain soothed her, laying his arm lovingly around her shoulder. "Remember you're a soldier's daughter; and,—well, brace up! Mother's going to be beautifully taken care of in that Sanatorium, and Aunt Harriet is with her, to keep her company and incidentally to indulge in some little pet cures of her own, on the side."
"But why, oh! why did it have to happen just now?" wailed Patricia, refusing to be comforted.
"Is it any wonder that she broke down completely and had a bad case of nervous prostration, after waiting over a year for me to come back from France? And feeling sure, too, for the last six months that she'd never see me alive again after she heard I'd been taken a prisoner to Germany? It's enough to have broken down the nerve of a cave-woman. And your mother was always delicate."
"Oh, Daddy! It was like getting you back from the dead," sighed Patricia, hiding her head in his shoulder and shuddering at the memory. "And in three months, you're going back again!"
"But not to the dangers and horrors, this time," he reminded her, and added half under his breath, "Worse luck! Fortunately or unfortunately, my constitution will never stand the strain of trench-life again, after a few months of German prison-diet, etc. But I'm only too thankful that the Government has found use for me in some other capacity."
Patricia, who had been perched on his knee, snuggling her head in his coat collar, suddenly sat up straight and looked him in the eyes. "Daddy, can't you tell me what it is you're doing?" she begged. "I don't ask just from idle curiosity. I want to understand. I want to help you if I can. I love America, and I am a soldier's daughter, and I want to act intelligently about things and be of some use. That's one reason I'm so glad you've allowed me to be with you in this strange, big city and in this great hotel, for three months,—besides the joy of not being separated from you before you go back to Europe again for goodness knows how long! I want to do something for my country, too!"