It was the first week in November, and a chilly wind was blowing across Governor's Island, shaking down the last leaves from the bare branches of the trees and tossing those on the ground into swirling heaps. The sentry walking past the Gordons' house wore an overcoat now, and Quartermaster's men were putting up storm doors and windows all along General's Row.

Lucy and Marian were hurrying home from the Matthews', for it was almost lunch time. For a month and a half Anne Matthews' governess had been giving lessons every morning to Anne, Julia, Lucy and Marian, and she made them work hard enough to be hungry by twelve o'clock. Mrs. Gordon had half intended sending Lucy to boarding-school this year, but just now she did not feel like losing her from home, and Lucy's interest in the plan had also faded. She might have gone over to the city to school, but her mother would not consent to this for Marian, and had been very glad on the whole to accept Mrs. Matthews' proposal. The four girls got along companionably together under Miss Ellis, and Marian had surprised them all by her quickness in catching up in spite of her handicap of lost schooling.

"It's really cold, but it can't be winter yet," said Lucy, thrusting her bare hands into her sweater pocket and looking reproachfully at the sun, which did not feel so warm as it used to.

"There's only a month and a half till Christmas, though," Marian reminded her. "When we began tying up the soldiers' Christmas packages last week it seemed awfully like winter, but Julia says maybe we'll have Indian summer yet."

"I never could make out when Indian summer comes. It's always coming soon and then the first thing you know there's a snow-storm," remarked Lucy, running up the piazza steps as she caught sight of her mother sitting inside the window.

Mrs. Gordon was reading a letter in the sitting-room, still wearing the hat and coat in which she had come from the Red Cross, and Lucy exclaimed as she entered the room:

"Oh, Mother, did you—is it from Bob?"

"Yes, sit down and we'll read it together," said Mrs. Gordon, looking up for a second from the closely-written sheets.

Bob's letters, arriving very erratically from France, sometimes two and three at a time and often weeks apart, were precious things these days, and Lucy needed no second bidding. Marian, too, pulled off her blue velvet tam and sank down on the floor by Lucy's side while Mrs. Gordon recommenced the letter aloud.

"Dear Mother and all of you:

"No news from home for a week, because I haven't been where I could get any, but hope to by to-morrow, when I shall have a chance to stop at my headquarters. I'll mail this then, too, if somebody doesn't turn up to take it in the meantime.

"It's three weeks to-day since I was transferred to the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps, and I am just about beginning to realize how little I know, though it seems as if I had never worked so hard in my life. Behind the lines here—there's no use in my being more definite, for they wouldn't pass my letter—we beginners are kept at it, as long as there is daylight to work by, overhauling the airplanes after every flight, and learning their construction from end to end. I have been up twice as observer, both times with Benton—he's a wonder in the air. They are awfully short of observers here, and I draw pretty well, and know how to take pictures. But that is as far as I have got yet, and it seems very little when there is such a monstrous lot of work waiting to be done.

"We get plenty to eat, Mother, and if we didn't there's a little village right behind us where they sell you food for almost nothing,—they'd give it to us if we hadn't the money to pay. I think these are the kindest, friendliest people in the world.

They can't do enough to welcome us here, and it's funny how much friendship can be expressed without knowing each other's language. My French, as you know, is rather weak, but it's better than the enlisted men's,—still they seem to get what they want.

"Well, I must tell you the best piece of news I have. I met Dick Harding on the road day before yesterday, while I was marching a detachment from our squadron back to camp after an exercising hike. He was riding on reconnoitering duty with some other officers, so of course there wasn't much time. But when he saw me he pulled up and jumped off his horse, and I halted my men while we shook hands and grinned at each other and tried to get everything we wanted to say into about three minutes. I sure was glad to see him. He asked about you all and what I was doing and tried to arrange a meeting when we should be off duty, though that's always too uncertain to count on.

"He looks well, though a little thin. Of course I hadn't seen him since my furlough. He says his regiment—you know which it is—will go into the first line trenches this week. It has been declared in first-class condition and training, and mentioned already in home despatches. He is awfully proud about it, of course, and wants to show what they can do. It made me more than ever anxious to get somewhere in aviation. They need every one of us right now. He had to mount again almost at once to overtake the others, and I don't know when we can find each other, for we are ten miles apart even while he's behind the firing line.

"Father's regiment is somewhere in this sector, he told me."

"Oh, Lucy, wasn't it fine for Bob to see him!" Mrs. Gordon stopped reading to exclaim.

"Wasn't it?" said Lucy with shining eyes. "I've been hoping so they would meet. But go on, Mother, won't you?"

"There isn't much more," said Mrs. Gordon, turning to the last page.

"Don't worry about whether you are sending me the right things for Christmas. If I get some of Lucy's fudge I shall be thankful. We appreciate things so much more over here that it ought to be easier to choose them than when we were at home. Compared with the French we have so much just now. I hope the people back home won't forget that there are few families in this part of France who have any money left to buy presents for their own soldiers. But anyway, we'll share what we have with them. Nobody could help doing that.

"I have to get into my oiling togs now and go over a machine that has just come in. It's Benton's, and he has been flying over the German trenches. He came to the door of my place just then to say he was nearly frozen and was going to take a run to warm up. Our shacks are getting cold at night, too, but some of the men are out to-day cutting fire-wood.

"Good-bye, if I don't find time to write any more to-day. I'm almost too sleepy at night to put anything like a sentence together. But I always think of you a lot.

"With much love,

"Bob."

"He never said whether our fruit cake came or not, Lucy," cried Marian, disappointed. "But perhaps it's waiting where the rest of his mail is," she reflected, tossing back her bright hair to look up inquiringly into Mrs. Gordon's face.

"Yes, probably it is, dear," Mrs. Gordon agreed, putting Bob's letter carefully back into its envelope. "I'm glad they have plenty to eat," she added with a smothered little sigh. "Lucy, call in William and we'll have lunch. Here comes Father now. He has to hurry off to-day to inspect supplies for these new recruits."

The post had seen a good many changes in the two months since Bob's regiment sailed. Many women of the Twenty-Eighth had packed up and gone away to their old homes or elsewhere. The new Infantry battalion had already been succeeded by another, and of the recruits of the early summer many were already overseas and all were trained men scattered to various regiments. Those drilling on the post now were not so numerous since the National Army camps had opened, though several hundred still remained in training, destined to fill vacancies among the regulars. In October another regiment had camped overnight on Governor's Island to slip away to their transports at dawn. But this one had not been so fortunate as the Twenty-Eighth, and had sent back word of an uneasy passage made among attacking submarines in the midst of a heavy storm which almost drove the transports from their convoy.

Mr. Leslie was straining every nerve to supply his lumber for ship-building as fast as the government asked for it, and he wrote feelingly of the great difficulties in the way of transportation, but also of brave and patriotic efforts in the West to get the utmost accomplished. He wrote much, too, rather anxiously, about his prolonged absence, though he had been a good deal cheered by Marian's letters, which showed an increasing interest in her cousins and in the life of the post.

Marion had taken it on herself to help Lucy a little in the tasks that fell to her share while Margaret was their only servant, and after luncheon they went out together on the piazza to put it in order after William's playing circus there with the puppy most of the morning. William tried to help by picking up his blocks, but did not make much of a success of it and ended by sitting on the steps and holding Happy in his arms, while the puppy wriggled with wild curiosity to get down and find out what a squirrel on the grass was burying with its quick little paws at the foot of a tree.

"No, you can't bother him. He has to get his meals buried for the winter," William scolded, struggling with the fat little beast, which was almost as strong as he was.

"Oh, let him go, William," said Lucy. "You know he's afraid of the squirrels when he gets near them. He just wants to prance around and bark at them."

"All right, then," said William, opening his arms and letting Happy go with a wild rush and scamper down the steps, which finished as usual in his backing hastily away from the angry, chattering squirrel before him, to stand furiously barking for a minute, then stopping short to wag his tail in the most friendly way as though peace had been declared.

"He's a fake," said Lucy laughing. "He can't expect to scare them after that."

Marian went indoors, when they had cleared things up, to take her daily nap, and Lucy followed her mother up-stairs and into her room.

"What are you going to do, Mother?" she asked uncertainly.

"Well, I think I'll mend some of William's clothes first," said Mrs. Gordon, sitting down beside her work-table. "Why, Lucy?"

"I just wanted to talk to you a few minutes," Lucy began, her face grown serious as she sat down and clasped her hands about one knee. "Mother, I feel like an awful good-for-nothing saying this, but I can't help it. I just have the blues terribly, and somehow it seems as though we were all waiting for dreadful things to happen, and nothing seems worth doing—at least nothing that I can do."

Lucy's burst of unhappiness did not seem to surprise her mother very much, though she laid down her work a moment and looked rather anxiously at her daughter as she answered.

"I know, Lucy. I'm afraid we all feel a little bit that way just now. It's a serious, worrying time for almost everybody, and the uncertainty of what lies before us is the hardest of all to bear. But you know, dear, if we give up being cheerful and brave we shan't get any work done and we'll feel worse than ever. Besides that, our letters to Bob will be anything but a comfort to him. We have got to find courage just as the women and girls of France and England did. And if you want useful work to do this winter besides our Red Cross, I will tell you of some right now."

"Oh, what, Mother? I'd like to pitch right in and do something with all my might!" cried Lucy from the depths of her eager, restless soul.

"You won't think much of it when you hear what it is," said Mrs. Gordon smiling. "There isn't any glory in it, but I mean it when I say that it is something worth while. I want you to give up your time and thoughts to making Marian a healthy, happy girl before her father comes home."

"Oh, Mother," said Lucy, disappointed.

"I know it doesn't sound very inspiring, but take my word for it your reward will come if you do what lies in your way, and, Lucy, you never had a better chance to do something worth doing."

Lucy sat motionless, staring at the floor, like a statue in a blue serge sailor-suit. Her mother picked up her work again and began sewing a rip in William's rompers, while Lucy moved a little, unclasped her hands about her knee and took a turn in staring at the ceiling. Her face was not exactly gay, though no one could accuse her of sulkiness. She looked like a person thinking out a sum in arithmetic. At last she spoke.

"Well, Mother, I'll try. Are you quite sure about that reward?" she asked, smiling now as she turned to her mother with a rather mocking twinkle in her hazel eyes.

"Quite sure," said Mrs. Gordon, undismayed. "One way or another it will come." She smiled back at her daughter, well pleased with Lucy's answer, for she knew it to be as good as a promise, and its accomplishment would mean something gained not only for Marian but for Lucy as well.

"I'm not surprised that you took a minute to think it over," she continued seriously. "I know it won't be easy."

"Well, I said I wanted a tough job to tackle," said Lucy, rising from her chair with a faint sigh. "Don't expect any startling results," she warned her mother, breaking into another smile as she looked back at her. "I'll get Marian now and go over to the Red Cross for a while. I promised Julia."

Half an hour later, when the three girls were at work over a table of gauze in the Red Cross rooms, Lucy began wondering to herself, even while she talked of other things, how she was going to accomplish what she had undertaken. She glanced at Marian, whose golden head was industriously bent over her work, wishing rather helplessly for a wand which, with one quick wave, would transform Marian into a strong, active girl, with no nerves to bother about.

Any one spending the day at the Gordon house now would probably have seen little to find fault with in Marian and much that was attractive. Nobody gave her more credit than Lucy for the change in her during the past few months, which had turned Lucy's feeling for her cousin from pity to warm liking and even admiration. But the improvement had only begun, and it only persisted as long as Marian was amused or interested or her sympathy aroused. There were still times of sulky indifference, of listless weariness, and most of all of obstinate refusal to help herself or exert her will to exercise or to eat her meals when she did not happen to feel like it. These were the hurdles in Lucy's way if she was to make Marian well and happy as every fourteen-year-old girl ought to be, and the obstacles loomed rather large just now, even with Marian before her in her brightest mood, and looking so pretty as she laughed and talked while her fingers worked that no one would have credited her with a single pout.

Unconsciously Lucy commenced the best way, for as she listened to Marian telling Julia the story of Happy's complete destruction of her best hat, Lucy summed up two great qualities in Marian's favor, and began to feel a wider understanding and sympathy with her cousin for thinking of them. Marian was extremely generous. She loved to give things away, and the loss of any of her own possessions worried her very little, or if as in this case it was a disappointment, she bore it good-humoredly. She even gave the puppy a forgiving pat with the poppies torn from her hat still clenched in his wicked jaws. Here Lucy skipped to the second point in her catalogue of virtues. Marian was certainly not vain or even conscious of her beauty. Beyond a careful regard for her appearance which had been taught her since babyhood, she gave little thought to herself and laughed in honest amusement if Lucy grew enthusiastic sometimes when her pretty little cousin put on something especially becoming.

Occupied with these thoughts, Lucy did not get so much work done as the others, besides being rather silent, and provokingly failing to answer several times when she was spoken to.

"Lucy Gordon, you've only made fifteen compresses, and you have been quiet enough to work, goodness knows," said Julia at last, looking at her friend with accusing eyes. "Of course if you're thinking out how to end the war or something really important to the country we won't disturb you, but you might think aloud. I'd like to hear it."

Lucy laughed. "My ideas would be almost as valuable as our parole man's. He is always telling Margaret what he thinks of the war. The other day I was out in the kitchen making fudge for Bob——Oh, dear," she interrupted herself, "it will be so stale when he gets it if he only goes for his mail every week or two!"

"But what were you going to say?" insisted Julia, as Lucy seemed to have subsided.

"Oh, only that I listened to Mat talking to Margaret in the pantry. He said, 'You see, it's this way. Either the Eye-talians will be able to stay where they are, or they will have to retreat.' I felt like telling him that maybe Margaret could have thought that out for herself, but she seemed quite impressed by it."

"Is she nice? Do you like her?" asked Julia. "I don't see her often the way I used to Elizabeth."

"Oh, she's nice," said Lucy. "She's kind of poky, and of course Father thinks Karl is the only person in the world who makes good coffee, but Margaret almost suits him. We do miss Elizabeth awfully, though. William simply can't get used to having her gone. He asked me yesterday if I thought Elizabeth would like Happy when she came back. He doesn't seem to get it through his head that she isn't coming back."

"She might, though, Lucy, when the war is over," suggested Marian.

"Yes—when," said Lucy without much enthusiasm, thinking of Bob.

"Have you any idea where they are now?" asked Julia, beginning to pile up her finished work.

"No, not a bit. Elizabeth said something to me the day she left about going to Sweden, but I don't really think she knew. Karl told Father they might go to Mexico. She sent William a post-card from Boston a few days after they left here."

"Let's stop now and go outdoors," proposed Julia, pushing back her chair. "I'm so tired of sitting still I'm getting fidgety."

"Let's go out and teach Marian to play golf," said Lucy, taking her bull by the horns.

"Yes! Will you come, Marian?" urged Julia. "We'll only play a little while until it gets dark. I know you'll like it."

"I'll come along and watch you, anyway," hedged Marian, reaching for her hat and not looking especially eager for a new effort.

"But it's no fun watching, and you'd love it so if you only once got interested," insisted Lucy, as the three got up and found their hats and sweaters. "I wish Bob had stayed long enough to teach you! He said he would and maybe you'd have let him. Come on, so we can write and tell him how much you've done—won't you?"

They had reached the foot of the stairs to the first floor by the time Lucy finished her appeal, and as they stepped outdoors Marian demanded with a sudden, fleeting smile:

"If I play this once, Lucy, will you let me alone afterward?"

"I promise," said Lucy promptly, with unshaken confidence in her favorite game. "It's you who won't let me alone then."