Sure enough, in the morning came better news. Father Bob’s face, when he turned around from the telephone, told that, even before he opened his lips.

“Sidney is holding his own,” he said.

You may think that wasn’t much better news, but it meant a great deal to the Camerons. “Sidney is holding his own,” they told every one who inquired, and their faces were hopeful. If Father Bob had any fears, he kept them to himself. The rest of the Camerons were young and it didn’t seem possible to them that Sidney could do anything but get well. Last night had been a bad dream, that was all.

The next morning’s message had the word “better” in it. “Little” stood before “better,” but nobody, not even Father Bob, paid much attention to “little.” Sidney was better. It was a week before Mother Jess wrote that the doctors pronounced him out of danger and that she and Laura would soon be home. Meanwhile, many things had happened.

You might have thought that Sidney’s illness was enough trouble to come to the Camerons at one time, but as Bruce quoted with a twist in his smile, “It never rains but it pours.” This time Bruce himself got the message which came from the War Department and read:

You are informed that Lieutenant Peter Fearing has been reported missing since September fifteenth. Letter follows.

The Camerons felt as badly as though Peter Fearing had been their own brother.

“The telegram doesn’t say that he’s 246 dead,” Trudy declared, over and over again.

“Maybe he’s a prisoner,” Tom suggested.

“Perhaps he had to come down in a wood somewhere,” Henry speculated, “and will get back to our lines.”

“The government makes mistakes sometimes,” Stannard said. “There was a woman in Upton—” He went on with a long story about a woman whose son was reported killed in France on the very day the boy had been in his mother’s house on furlough from a cantonment. There were a great many interesting and ingenious details to the story, but nobody paid much attention to them. “So you never can tell,” Stannard wound up.

“No, you never can tell,” Bruce agreed, but he didn’t look convinced. Something, he was quite sure, was wrong with Pete.

“Don’t anybody write Mother Jess,” he 247 said. “She and Laura have enough to worry about with Sid.”

“What if they see it in the papers?” Elliott asked.

“They’re busy. Ten to one they won’t see it, since it isn’t head-lined on the front page. Wait till we get the letter.”

“How soon do you suppose the letter will come?” Gertrude wished to know.

“‘Letter follows,’” Henry read from the yellow slip which the postman delivered from the telegraph office. “That means right away, I should say.”

“Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t,” said Tom and then he had a story to tell. It didn’t take Tom long, for he was a boy of fewer words than Stannard.

Morning, noon, and night the Camerons speculated about that telegram. They combed its words with a fine-toothed comb, but they couldn’t make anything out of them except the bald fact that Pete was missing.

If you think they let it go at that, you are very much mistaken. Where the fact stopped the Cameron imaginations began, and imaginations never know where to stop. The less actual information an imagination has to work on, the busier it is. The Camerons hadn’t any more imagination than most people, but what they had grew very busy. It fairly amazed them with its activity. If you think that this was silly and that they ought to have chained up their imaginations until the promised letter arrived, it only shows that you have never received any such telegram.

After all, the letter, when it came, didn’t tell them much. The letter said that Lieutenant Peter Fearing had gone out with his squadron on a bombing-expedition well within the enemy lines. The formation had successfully accomplished its raid and was returning when it was taken by surprise and surrounded 249 by a greatly superior force of enemy planes, which gave the Americans a running fight of thirty-nine minutes to their lines. Lieutenant Fearing’s was one of two planes which failed to return to the aËrodrome. When last seen, his machine was in combat with four Hun planes over enemy territory.

“What did I tell you?” interrupted Tom. “He’s a prisoner.”

An airplane had been reported as falling in flames near this spot, but whether it was Lieutenant Fearing’s machine or another, no data was as yet at hand to prove. The writer begged to remain, etc.

No, that letter only opened up fresh fields for Cameron imaginations to torment Cameron hearts. Nobody had happened to think before of Pete’s machine catching fire.

“Gee!” said Henry, “if that plane was his—”

“There’s no certainty that it was,” said Bruce, quickly.

All the Camerons, you see, knew perfectly well what happens to an aviator whose machine catches fire.

“If that machine was Pete’s,” Father Bob mused, “Hun aviators may drop word of him within our lines. They have done that kind of thing before.”

“Wouldn’t Bob cable, if he knew anything more than this letter says?” Gertrude questioned.

“I expect Bob’s waiting to find out something certain before he cables,” said Father Bob. “Doubtless he has written. We shall just have to wait for his letter.”

“Wait! Gee!” whispered Henry.

“Both the boys’ letters were so awfully late, in the summer!” sighed Gertrude. “However can we wait for a letter from Bob?”

Elliott said nothing at all. Her heart 251 was aching with sympathy for Bruce. When a person could do something, she thought, it helped tremendously. Mother Jess and Laura had gone to Sidney and she had had a chance to make Laura’s going possible, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could do for Bruce. And she wished to do something for Bruce; she found that she wished to tremendously. Thinking about Mother Jess and Laura reminded her to look up and ask, “What are we going to write them at Camp Devens?”

Then she discovered that she and Bruce were alone in the room. He was sitting at Mother Jess’s desk, in as deep a brown study as she had been. The girl’s voice roused him.

“The kind of thing we’ve been writing—home news. Time enough to tell them about Pete when they get here. By that time, perhaps, there will be something definite to tell.” He hesitated a 252 minute. “Laura is going to feel pretty well cut up over this.”

Elliott looked up quickly. “Especially cut up?”

“I think so. Oh, there wasn’t anything definite between her and Pete—nothing, at least, that they told the rest of us. But a fellow who had eyes—” He left the sentence unfinished and walked over to Elliott’s chair. “You know, I told you,” he said, “that I shouldn’t go into this war unless I was called. Of course I’m registered now, but whether or not they call me—if Pete is out of it—and I can possibly manage it, I’m going in.”

A queer little pain contracted Elliott’s heart. And then that odd heart of hers began to swell and swell until she thought it would burst. She looked at the boy, with proud eyes. It didn’t occur to her to wonder what she was proud of. Bruce Fearing was no kin of hers, you know.

“I knew you would.” Somehow it 253 seemed to the girl that she could always tell what Bruce Fearing was going to do, and that there was nothing strange in such knowledge. How strong he was! how splendid and understanding and fine! “Oh,” she cried, “I wish, how I wish I could help you!”

“You do help me,” he said.

“I?” Her eyes lifted in real surprise. “How can I?”

“By being you.”

His hand had only to move an inch to touch hers, but it lay motionless. His eyes, gray and steady and clear, held the girl’s. She gave him back look for look.

“I am glad,” she said softly and her face was like a flower.

Bruce was out of the house before Elliott thought of the thing she could do for him.

“Mercy me!” she cried. “You’re the slowest person I’ve ever seen in my life, Elliott Cameron!” She ran to the kitchen 254 door, but the boy was nowhere in sight. “He must be out at the barn,” she said and took a step in that direction, only to take it back. “No, I won’t. I’ll just go by myself and do it.”

Whatever it was, it put her in a great hurry. As fast as she had dashed to the kitchen she now ran to the front hall, but the third step of the stairs halted her.

“Elliott Cameron,” she declared earnestly, “I do believe you have lost your mind! Haven’t you any sense at all? And you a responsible housekeeper!”

Perhaps it wasn’t the first time a whirlwind had ever struck the Cameron farmhouse. Elliott hadn’t a notion that she could work so fast. Her feet fairly flew. Bed-covers whisked into place; dusting-cloths raced over furniture; even milk-pans moved with unwonted celerity. But she left them clean, clean and shining.

“There!” said the girl, “now we shall do well enough till dinner-time. I’m going 255 into the village. Anybody want to come?”

Priscilla jumped up. “I do, unless Trudy wants to more.”

Gertrude shook her head. “I’m going to put up tomatoes,” she said, “the rest of the ripe ones.”

“Don’t you want help?”

“Not a bit. Tomatoes are no work, at all.”

Elliott dashed up-stairs. In a whirl of excitement she pinned on her hat and counted her money. No matter how much it cost, she meant to say all that she wanted to.

Her cheeks were pink and her dimples hard at work playing hide-and-seek with their own shadows, when she cranked the little car. Everything would come right now; it couldn’t fail to come right. Priscilla hopped into the seat beside her and they sped away.

“I have cabled Father,” Elliott announced 256 at dinner, with the prettiest imaginable little air of importance and confidence, “I have cabled Father to find out all he can about Pete and to let us know at once. Perhaps we shall hear something to-morrow.”

But the next day passed, and the next, and the day after that, and still no cable from Father.

It was very bewildering. At first Elliott jumped every time the telephone rang, and took down the receiver with quickened pulses. No matter what her brain said, her heart told her Father would send good news. She couldn’t associate him with thoughts of ill news. Of course, her brain said there was no logic in that kind of argument, and that facts were facts; and in a case like Pete’s, fathers couldn’t make or mar them. Her heart kept right on expecting good tidings.

But when long days and longer nights dragged themselves by and no word at all 257 came from overseas, the girl found out what a big empty place the world may become, even while it is chuck-full of people, and what three thousand miles of water really means. She thought she had known before, but she hadn’t. So long as letters traveled back and forth, irregularly timed it might be, but continuously, she still kept the familiar sense of Father—out of sight, but there, as he had always been, most dependably there. Now, for the first time in her life, she had called to him and he had not answered. There might be—there probably were, she reminded herself—reasons why he hadn’t answered; good, reassuring reasons, if one only knew them. He might be temporarily in a region out of touch with cables; the service might have dropped a link somewhere. One could imagine possible explanations. But it was easier to imagine other things. And the fact remained that, since he didn’t answer, she 258 couldn’t get away from a horrible, paralyzing sense that he wasn’t there.

It didn’t do any good to try to run from that sensation; there was nowhere to run. It blocked every avenue of thought, a sinister shape of dread. The only help was in keeping very, very busy. And even then one couldn’t stop one’s thoughts traveling, traveling, traveling along those fearful paths.

At last Elliott knew how the others felt about Pete. She had thought she understood that and felt it, too, but now she found that she hadn’t. It makes all the difference in the world, she discovered, whether one stands inside or outside a trouble. The heart that had ached so sympathetically for Bruce knew its first stab of loss and recoiled. The others recognized the difference; or was it only that Elliott herself had eyes to see what she had been blind to before? No one said anything. In little unconscious, lovable 259 ways they made it quite clear that now she was one with them.

“Perhaps we would better send for them to come home from Camp Devens,” Father Bob suggested one day. He threw out his remark at the supper-table, which would seem to address it to the family at large, but he looked straight at Elliott.

“Oh, no,” she cried, “don’t send for them!” But she couldn’t keep a flash of joy out of her eyes.

“Sure you’re not getting tired?”

“Certain sure!”

It disappointed her the least little bit that Uncle Bob let the suggestion drop so readily. And she was disappointed at her own disappointment. “Can’t you ‘carry on’ at all?” she demanded of herself, scornfully. “It was all your own doing, you know.” But how she did long at times for Aunt Jessica!

Of course, Elliott couldn’t cry, however much she might wish to, with the family 260 all taking their cues from her mood. She said so fiercely to every lump that rose in her throat. She couldn’t indulge herself at all adequately in the luxury of being miserable; she couldn’t even let herself feel half as scared as she wished to, because, if she did, just once, she couldn’t keep control of herself, and if she lost control of herself there was no telling where she might end—certainly in no state that would be of any use to the family. No, for their sake, she must sit tight on the lid of her grief and fear and anxiety.

But there were hours when the cover lifted a little. No girl, not the bravest, could avoid such altogether. Elliott didn’t think herself brave, not a bit. She knew merely that the thing she had to do couldn’t be done if there were many such hours.

One day Bruce heard somebody sobbing up in the hay-loft. The sound didn’t carry far; it was controlled, suppressed; 261 but Bruce had gone up the ladder for something or other, I forget just what, and, thinking Priscilla was in trouble, he kept on. The girl crying, face down in the hay, wasn’t Priscilla. Very softly Bruce started to tiptoe away, but the rustling of the hay under his feet betrayed him.

“I didn’t mean—any one to—find me.”

“Shall I go away?”

She shook her head. “I can’t stand it!” she wailed. “I simply can’t stand it!” And she sobbed as though her heart would break.

Bruce sat down beside the girl on the hay and patted the hand nearest him. He didn’t know anything else to do. Her fingers closed on his convulsively.

“I’m an awful old cry-baby,” she choked at last. “I’ll behave myself, in a minute.”

“No, cry away,” said Bruce. “A girl has to cry sometimes.”

After a while the racking sobs spent themselves. “There!” she said, sitting up. “I never thought I’d let a boy see me cry. Now I must go in and help Trudy get supper.”

She dabbed at her eyes with a wet little wad of linen. Bruce plucked a clean handkerchief from his pocket and tucked it into her fingers.

“Yours doesn’t seem quite big enough for the job,” he said.

She took it gratefully. She had never thought of a boy as a very comforting person, but Bruce was. “Oh, Bruce, you know!”

“Yes, I know.”

“It’s so—so lonely. Dad’s all I’ve got, of my really own, in the world.”

He nodded. “You’re gritty, all right.”

“Why, Bruce Fearing! how can you say that after the way I’ve acted?”

“That’s why I say it.”

“But I’m scared all the time. If I did 263 what I wanted to, I’d be a perpetual fountain.”

“And you’re not.”

She stared at him. “Is being scared and trying to cover it up what you call grit?”

“The grittiest kind of grit.”

For a sophisticated girl she was singularly naÏve, at times. He watched her digest the idea, sitting up on the hay, her chin cupped in her two hands, straws in her hair. Her eyes were swollen and her nose red, and his handkerchief was now almost as wet as her own. “I thought I was an awful coward,” she said.

A smile curved his firm lips, but the steady gray eyes were tender. “I shouldn’t call you a coward.”

She shook herself and stood up. “Bruce, you’re a darling. Now, will you please go and see if the coast is clear, so I can slide up-stairs without being seen? I must wash up before supper.”

“I’d get supper,” he said, “if I didn’t have to milk to-night. Promised Henry.”

She shook her head positively. “I’ll let you do lots of things, Bruce, but I won’t let you get supper for me—not with all the other things you have to do.”

“Oh, all right! I dare you to jump off the hay.”

“Down there? Take you!” she cried, and with the word sprang into the air.

Beside her the boy leaped, too. They landed lightly on the fragrant mass in the bay of the barn.

“Oh,” she cried, “it’s like flying, isn’t it! Why wasn’t I brought up on a farm?”

There was a little choke still left in her voice, and her smile was a trifle unsteady, but her words were ready enough. In the doorway she turned and waved to the boy and then went on, her head held high, slender and straight and gallant, into the house.