The sister’s heart gave a flying leap.
“Possibly. But don’t look for it! As I say, what does--anything--matter, except that I will be back with you--sooner or later?”
The Flame suddenly bowed her wet cheek on the narrow cot next his; the ring in the last words, the whole world of relief, gave her for the first time an inkling into the soldier’s lot over there; no letter of his had done so.
“While the fight was on, all was Advance--and a heart full of cheers!”
“I--I was always Iver’s best chum--he said so--but I suppose I’ll have to resign myself now to the fact that when he went over the top at Château-Thierry and St. Mihiel--four times he led his men over the top, once into that Belleau wheat-field, yellow in the morning, red at night, and again into the meadow where he remembers thinking, before he was shot down, that the clover was sweet, even if he couldn’t smell it for the gas--his real thoughts, when he had any, were more of another girl than of me. Well! I can’t be jealous about that, as I was over the things he left with me! Oh! if he only could be discharged before Christmas--and spend it with us!”
Such was the tenor of the sisterly thoughts as the train bore her back to the home city of Clevedon, now daily witnessing the return of officers and men who wore upon their right sleeve the gold stripes telling of service in France--supplemented often and nobly by the added gold which spoke of wounds.
“Dear me! I wish they--the doctors up there at Camp Evens--would pronounce him better, turn him over to the Casualty Department; then he’d probably get his discharge right away, and arrive home unexpectedly--perhaps! Oh-h!”
The bliss of the latter possibility was the spirit in Sara Davenport’s feet which kept them moving elastically from room to room of her father’s suburban bungalow on the day before Christmas Eve. It was a red-hearted wreath here, a garland there, typifying the matchless thanksgiving of this Christmas in many a heart, to be green while life should last--and the heart have a reminiscent throb!
It was creaming, frothing, whipping, mixing, and cutting into diamond shapes which borrowed luster from the diamond mine of contingent expectancy within such as had never transfigured cookies before.