I don't know how I got there, but when I come to I and that scared kid was all mixed up in his arms and the three of us crying to beat the band which had struck up and the crowd yelling like mad. And it was a peach of a stunt, believe you me.
"Didn't you get my cable?" Jim says. And I says no, and we clinched again. And then we heard a funny, purring sound right behind and broke loose and turned around and there was that devil of a Ted taking a close-up!
"Hold it! Damn you, hold it another ten feet!" yells Rosco, who was dancing around like a regulation director, just back of Ted. "Fine, Fine! Oh, boy, what a pair of smiles! Say, folks, we shot the whole scene—some News Weekly Feature. Oh say, can you see me, Rosco, the publicity man!"
Honest to Gawd you would of thought he had gone crazy! And that bone-headed crowd couldn't make out was the whole thing staged or real. Believe you me, I had to pinch myself to know was it real or not, but thank Gawd it was, it was! And after nearly two years! Do you know how that feels? Give a guess! And then, just as I thought now this cruel war and everything is over, why that roughneck of a officer give the order to fall in and of course Jim had to and left me there with that kid in my arms for Ted to make a couple of stills for the papers.
Believe you me, I couldn't tell how many he took, or when, because seeing Jim so sudden and unexpected had pretty near killed me, and I couldn't say anything much about the parade either, because something kept me from seeing it and I guess it was my own glad tears. Anyways, I had three wet handkerchiefs in my bag when I got home and one of them a perfect stranger's.
Well, of course, I expected the parade would break up when it struck Harlem and the boys would hurry right home. And did they? They did not! I hurried right home, all right, all right, but not so Jim. And for a long while I was sitting there in one of my trousseau dresses and a fearful state of mind over what had he done to get killed since I last seen him. But hours went by and still he didn't come. And I didn't know his 'phone or where he was or anything. The only clue I had that the whole business was a fact and no dream was the cable, which had come after he did, saying he would be home as arranged after all.
Believe you me, I hope never to live through another twenty-four hours like them that followed, because I couldn't eat or sleep, not knowing where he was.
Next morning I wouldn't even look at the papers which was Sunday and full of our and the division's pictures. And Monday was worse, because even although Jim might be alive none of the hospitals nor yet the morgue had him, and so I commenced to think he had gone back on me. A telegram come from the coast saying "Great Sunday story bring Rosco contract follows," but what did I care for that stuff without Jim? Ma was very silent all this time, and kept in her room a lot, with the door shut. And then late Monday afternoon the door-bell rung, and my heart leaped to my feet like it had done at every tinkle for 48 hours, and I went myself, but it was only Ruby Roselle and Mr. Mulvaney of the Welcome Home Committee with her! The men that girl knows! Well, she sees them in another light than I and it's a good thing all tastes don't run the same. But this was such a surprise I asked them in before I thought and pretty near forgot my own troubles for a minute.
Ruby cuddled down into her kolinsky wrap and give me the fish-eye, as she addressed me in her own sweet way as a woman to her best enemy.