One was blinking like the sleepiest Owlet ever caught abroad at daylight; she had been awake since three, abroad since thirty minutes past; she was the doctor’s sister, Lilla Kemp, Little Owl, of the Morning-Glory Group of Camp Fire Girls--a Glory Unit now, as it paraded the streets in a body, radiating ecstasy and anticipatory reunion--longed-for reunion with the brothers over there.
The other, being by name and nature of the order of the flame, looked as if she could never “drowse” again, as if she had caught the very heart of the sunlight joy upon the tips of her shading eyelashes and held it there in twinkling points of gold.
“I’ve made the duckiest--dearest--dandiest--little set of baby-clothes for her--for Peace Europa--her mother told me, long ago, that if she happened to be born on Peace Day, she would name her that,” said Sesooā, the Flame. “You should see them, Lil, the sweetest little dress--I put every teeny, tiny, microscopic stitch in it myself,”--there was a drop of water on the gold lashes now--“the daintiest fine linen gertrude and tiny shirtie. You see, I knew she was a soldier’s child--and due to arrive about this time.”
“And you’ll exhibit them, won’t you, at our next ceremonial meeting--a Peace Ceremonial, the Guardian said it would be, if the Armistice went through; she’s planning for it already. They’ll mean a new honor for hand craft, a pretty green honor-bead--those dear little baby-clothes.”
“Oh! I can hardly think about that now, or of anything, except--except that they’re a thanksgiving set--offering,”--the tears brimmed over at this golden point, two of them dropped upon Peace Europa’s blanket, saluting the invisible peace twin, new-born Peace Angel, sleeping beside her--“a thanksgiving offering because Iver’s coming back.... Oh! I can’t be s-sure yet, of course! He’s been wounded so often, burned with mustard gas, lost--lost all his beautiful wig, as he jokingly said--his hair, you know, burned off.
“But when you come back,
As you will come back!”
The sister’s tear-breathed chant--each word a whirling joy-center--was crooned into Europa’s hooding blanket. “Isn’t she the darlingest baby you ever saw--little Peace Angel?” added Sara Davenport very softly. “I’m going to adopt her in a way; take care of her for an hour a day later on, if her mother will allow me, as you have been doing with that neighbor’s baby--Lilla.”
“Why don’t we adopt her forthwith, as a Group, directly she’s out of the hospital, make her clothes for her, bring her toys, and when she’s a year old, or so, take her to camp with us in the summer? Fancy her building sand-castles--little Peace Europa--among the cranberries on that white beach from which you put off in your radio-smeared dory, to signal the Coast Guards! Fancy that--our Peace Europa!”
Lilla’s eyes spilled over with humid light upon the blanketed mite.