Who knows but Lieutenant Iver did, as, an hour later, when the spirit of the Ceremonial meeting had turned to Christmas merrymaking, his fingers, long and thin, wielded the colonial knocker and rang the bell of the Deering mansion on Nobility Hill--as certain annals of the city were proud to call it.
“Oh-h! I nev-er could come in, sis.... Such a scarecrow I am--without as much hair as--as that Peace Babe you were telling me about!”
“She! Why! she has a perfect shock now--little Peace Europa! She--she’s growing, at all points, like her name!” It was his sister’s voice, merry, tender--tearfully moved--as she ran down-stairs to meet him. “So--so you were discharged sooner than you expected, Iver.”
“Yes. Got my marching orders from the Casualty Detachment only a few hours ago. Didn’t even wait to telephone! Come to fetch you home--sis!... Why-y! Olive.”
Somehow, as she watched that meeting between the Torch Bearer and the gaunt soldier from over-seas, Sara Davenport, regardless of an onlooking butler, turned aside in the great lighted hall, and hid her wet eyes in the crook of her arm from which the soft leather fringes fell back--just as she had done by the bungalow on the wild sea-beach, after the exciting capture of a spy, when she yearned that Peace might come again.
She was a forked Flame now, as then, cleft by dividing emotions.
For it was evident by the wonderful color on Olive’s cheek, by the joy-brand in her eyes, who--who was the prop that held up her world--her maidenly castles in the air. And it was not Atlas, nor any one of her cousins, fine as might be their war-score!
But not even Sister Sara, only the December breeze fluttering about the brownstone mansion on the hill, heard what passed, yet a little while later, between a very tall, very thin officer, assiduously cultivating a baby crop of new hair, and a dark-eyed girl, upon a balcony of the Deering home, whither maidens in ceremonial dress had flocked to hear far, sweet echoes of Community singing--after the said soldier had been beguiled up-stairs on the plea that he might keep his trench-cap on.
And the said breeze actually halted, cornered by the new mischief--the shy, glad mischief--in Olive’s tones which had hitherto been more on the meditative order.
“I wonder”--murmured the Torch Bearer--“I wonder, now, if I’m the very first Camp Fire Girl to--to be proposed to--that’s what it means, doesn’t it--in head-band and moccasins--ceremonial dress,” shyly.