“And you don’t think maybe I ought to have had lemon custard to go with the pumpkin instead of the mince?”

Miss Marilla Chadwick turned from her anxious watching at the kitchen window to search Mary Amber’s clear young eyes for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“Oh, no, I think mince is much better. All men like mince-pie, it’s so—sort of comprehensive, you know.”

Miss Marilla turned back to her window, satisfied.

“Well, now, if he came on that train, he ought to be in sight around the bend of the road in about three minutes,” she said tensely. “I’ve timed it often when folks were coming out from town, and it always takes just six minutes to get around the bend of the road.”

All through the months of the Great War Miss Marilla had knit and bandaged and emergencied and canteened with an eager, wistful look in her dreamy gray eyes, and many a sweater had gone to some needy lad with the little thrilling remark as she handed it over to the committee:

“I keep thinking, what if my nephew Dick should be needing one, and this just come along in time?”

But when the war was over, and most people had begun to use pink and blue wool on their needles, or else cast them aside altogether and tried to forget there ever had been such a thing as war, and the price of turkeys had gone up so high that people forgot to be thankful the war was over, Miss Marilla still held that wistful look in her eyes, and still spoke of her nephew Dick with bated breath and a sigh. For was not Dick among those favored few who were to remain and do patrol work for an indefinite time in the land of the enemy, while others were gathered to their waiting homes and eager loved ones? Miss Marilla spoke of Dick as of one who still lingered on the border-land of terror, and who laid his young life a continuous sacrifice for the good of the great world.

A neat paragraph to that effect appeared in The Springhaven Chronicle, a local sheet that offered scant news items and fat platitudes at an ever-increasing rate to a gullible and conceited populace, who supported it because it was really the only way to know what one’s neighbors were doing. The paragraph was the reluctant work of Mary Amber, the young girl who lived next door to Miss Marilla and had been her devoted friend since the age of four, when Miss Marilla used to bake sugar cookies for her in the form of stogy men with currant eyes and outstretched arms.

Mary Amber remembered Nephew Dick as a young imp of nine who made a whole long, beautiful summer ugly with his torments. She also knew that the neighbors all round about had memories of that summer when Dick’s parents went on a Western trip and left him with his Aunt Marilla. Mary Amber shrank from exposing her dear friend to the criticisms of such of the readers of The Springhaven Chronicle as had memories of their cats tortured, their chickens chased, their flower-beds trampled, their children bullied, and their windows broken by the youthful Dick.

But time had softened the memories of that fateful summer in Miss Marilla’s mind, and, besides, she was sorely in need of a hero. Mary Amber had not the heart to refuse to write the paragraph, but she made it as conservative as the circumstances allowed.

But now, at last, among the latest to be sent back, Lieutenant Richard Chadwick’s division was coming home!

Miss Marilla read in the paper what day they would sail, and that they were expected to arrive not later than the twenty-ninth; and, as she read, she conceived a wild and daring plan. Why should not she have a real, live hero herself? A bit belated, of course, but all the more distinguished for that. And why should not Mary Amber have a whole devoted soldier boy of her own for the village to see and admire? Not that she told Mary Amber that, oh, no! But in her mind’s vision she saw herself, Mary Amber, and Dick all going together to church on Sunday morning, the bars on his uniform gleaming like the light in Mary Amber’s hazel eyes. Miss Marilla had one sudden pang of fear when she thought that perhaps he would not wear his uniform home, now that everybody else was in citizen’s clothing; then her sweet faith in the wholesomeness of all things came to her rescue, and she smiled in relief. Of course he would wear it to come home; that would be too outrageous not to, when he had been a hero. Of course he would wear it the first few days. And that was a good reason why she must invite him at once to visit her instead of waiting until he had been to his home and been demobilized. She must have him in his uniform. She wanted the glory of it for her own brief share in that great time of uplifting and sacrifice that was so fast going into history.

So Miss Marilla had hastened into the city to consult a friend who worked in the Red Cross and went out often to the wharves to meet the incoming boats. This friend promised to find out just when Dick’s division was to land, to hunt him up herself, and to see that he had the invitation at once. “See that he came,” she put it, with a wise reservation in her heart that the dear, loving soul should not be disappointed.

And now, the very night before, this friend had called Miss Marilla on the telephone to say that she had information that Dick’s ship would dock at eight in the morning. It would probably be afternoon before he could get out to Springhaven; so she had better arrange to have dinner about half past five. So Miss Marilla, with shining eyes and heart that throbbed like a young girl’s, had thrown her cape over her shoulders and hastened in the twilight through the hedge to tell Mary Amber.

Mary Amber, trying to conceal her inward doubts, had congratulated Miss Marilla and promised to come over the first thing in the morning to help get dinner. Promised also, after much urging, almost with tears on the part of Miss Marilla, to stay and help eat the dinner afterward in company with Miss Marilla and the young lieutenant. From this part of her promise Mary Amber’s soul recoiled, for she had no belief that the young leopard with whom she had played at the age of ten could have changed his spots in the course of a few years, or even covered them with a silver bar. But Mary Amber soon saw that her presence at that dinner was an intrinsic part of Miss Marilla’s joy in the anticipation of the dinner; and, much as she disliked the position of being flung at the young lieutenant in this way, she promised. After all, what did it matter what he thought of her anyway, since she had no use for him? And then, she could always quietly freeze him whenever Miss Marilla’s back was turned. And Mary Amber could freeze with her hazel eyes when she tried.

So quite early in the morning Miss Marilla and Mary Amber began a cheerful stir in Miss Marilla’s big sunny kitchen, and steadily, appetizingly, there grew an array of salads and pies and cakes and puddings and cookies and doughnuts and biscuits and pickles and olives and jellies; while a great bird stuffed to bursting went through the seven stages of its final career to the oven.

But now it was five o’clock. The bird with brown and shining breast was waiting in the oven, “done to a turn;” mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, succotash, and onions had received the finishing-touches, and had only to be “taken up.” Cranberries and pickles and celery and jelly gave the final touches to a perfect table, and the sideboard fairly groaned under its load of pies and cake. One might have thought a whole regiment were to dine with Miss Marilla Chadwick that day, from the sights and smells that filled the house. Up in the spare room the fire glowed in a Franklin heater, and a geranium glowed in a west window between spotless curtains to welcome the guest; and now there was nothing left for the two women to do but the final anxiety.

Mary Amber had her part in that, perhaps even more than her hostess and friend; for Mary Amber was jealous for Miss Marilla, and Mary Amber was youthfully incredulous. She had no trust in Dick Chadwick, even though he was an officer and had patrolled an enemy country for a few months after the war was over.

Mary Amber had slipped over to her own house when she finished mashing the potatoes, and changed her gown. She was putting little squares of butter on the bread-and-butter plates now, and the setting sun cast a halo of burnished light over her gold hair, and brightened up the silk of her brown gown with its touches of wood-red. Mary Amber was beautiful to look upon as she stood with her butterknife deftly cutting the squares and dropping them in just the right spot on the plates. But there was a troubled look in her eyes as she glanced from time to time at the older woman over by the window. Miss Marilla had given over all thought of work, and was intent only on the road toward the station. It would seem as if not until this moment had her great faith failed her, and the thought come to her that perhaps he might not come.

“You know, of course, he might not get that train,” she said meditatively. “The other leaves only half an hour later. But she said she’d tell him to take this one.”

“That’s true, too,” said Mary Amber cheerily. “And nothing will be hurt by waiting. I’ve fixed those mashed potatoes so they won’t get soggy by being too hot, and I’m sure they’ll keep hot enough.”

“You’re a good, dear girl, Mary Amber,” said Miss Marilla, giving her a sudden impulsive kiss. “I only wish I could do something great and beautiful for you.”

Miss Marilla caught up her cape, and hurried toward the door.

“I’m going out to the gate to meet him,” she said with a smile. “It’s time he was coming in a minute now, and I want to be out there without hurrying.”

She clambered down the steps, her knees trembling with excitement. She hoped Mary Amber had not looked out of the window. A boy was coming on a bicycle; and, if he should be a boy with a telegram or a special-delivery letter, she wanted to read it before Mary Amber saw her. Oh, how awful if anything had happened that he couldn’t come to-day! Of course, he might come later to-night, or to-morrow; and a turkey would keep, though it was never so good as the minute it was taken out of the oven.

The boy was almost to the gate now, and—yes, he was going to stop. He was swinging one leg out with that long movement that meant slowing up. She panted forward with a furtive glance back at the house. She hoped Mary Amber was looking at the turkey and not out of the window.

It seemed that her fingers had suddenly gone tired while she was writing her name in that boy’s book, and they almost refused to tear open the envelope as the boy swung on his wheel again and vanished down the road. She had presence of mind enough to keep her back to the house and the telegram in front of her as she opened it covertly, trying to keep the attitude of still looking eagerly down the road, while the typewritten brief message got itself across to her tumultuous mind.

“Impossible to accept invitation. Have other engagements. Thanks just the same.

“(Signed)

“Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick.”

Miss Marilla tore the yellow paper hastily, and crumpled it into a ball in her hands as she stared down the road through brimming tears. She managed an upright position; but her knees were shaking under her, and a gone feeling came in her stomach. Across the sunset skies in letters of accusing size there seemed to blaze the paragraphs from The Springhaven Chronicle, copied afterwards in the county Gazette, about Miss Marilla Chadwick’s nephew, Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick, who was expected at his aunt’s home as soon as he landed in this country after a long and glorious career in other lands, and who would spend the week-end with his aunt, and “doubtless be heard from at the Springhaven Club House before he left.” Her throat caught with a queer little sound like a groan. Still, with her hand grasping the front gate convulsively, Miss Marilla stood and stared down the road, trying to think what to do, how to word a paragraph explaining why he did not come, how to explain to Mary Amber so that that look of sweet incredulousness should not come into her eyes.

Then suddenly, as she stared through her blur of tears, there appeared a straggling figure, coming around the bend of the road by the Hazard house; and Miss Marilla, with nothing at all in her mind but to escape from the watchful, loving eyes of Mary Amber for a moment longer, till she could think what to say to her, staggered out the gate and down the road toward the person, whoever it was, that was coming slowly up the road.

On stumbled Miss Marilla, nearer and nearer to the oncoming man, till suddenly through a blur of tears she noticed that he wore a uniform. Her heart gave a leap, and for a moment she thought it must be Dick; that he had been playing her a joke by the telegram, and was coming on immediately to surprise her before she had a chance to be disappointed. It was wonderful how the years had done their halo work for Dick with Miss Marilla.

She stopped short, trembling, one hand to her throat. Then, as the man drew nearer and she saw his halting gait, saw, too, his downcast eyes and whole dejected attitude, she somehow knew it was not Dick. Never would he have walked to her home in that way. There had been a swagger about little Dick that could not be forgotten. The older Dick, crowned now with many honors, would not have forgotten to hold his head high.

Unconscious of her attitude of intense interest she stood with hand still fluttering at her throat, and eyes brightly on the man as he advanced.

When he was almost opposite to her, he looked up. He had fine eyes and good features; but his expression was bitter for one so young, and in the eyes there was a look of pain.

“Oh! excuse me,” said Miss Marilla, looking around furtively to be sure Mary Amber could not see them so far away. “Are you in a very great hurry?”The young man looked surprised, amused, and slightly bored, but paused politely.

“Not specially,” he said; and there was a tone of dry sarcasm in his voice. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

He lifted the limp little trench-cap, and paused to rest his lame knee.

“Why, I was wondering if you would mind coming in and eating dinner with me,” spoke Miss Marilla eagerly from a dry throat of embarrassment. “You see my nephew’s a returned soldier, and I’ve just got word he can’t come. The dinner’s all ready to be dished up, and it needn’t take you long.”

“Dinner sounds good to me,” said the young man with a grim glimmer of a smile. “I guess I can accommodate you, madam. I haven’t had anything to eat since I left the camp last night.”“Oh! You poor child!” said Miss Marilla, beaming on him with a welcoming smile. “Now isn’t it fortunate I should have asked you?” as if there had been a throng of passing soldiers from which she might have chosen. “But are you sure I’m not keeping you from some one else who is waiting for you?”

“If there’s any one else waiting anywhere along this road for me, it’s all news to me, madam; and anyhow you got here first, and I guess you have first rights.”

He had swung into the easy, familiar vernacular of the soldier now; and for the moment his bitterness was held in abeyance, and the really nice look in his eyes shone forth.

“Well, then, we’ll just go along in,” said Miss Marilla, casting another quick glance toward the house. “And I think I’m most fortunate to have found you. It’s so disappointing to get dinner ready for company and then not have any.”

“Must be almost as disappointing as to get all ready for dinner and then not have any,” said the soldier affably.

Miss Marilla smiled wistfully.

“I suppose your name doesn’t happen to be Richard, does it?” she asked with that childish appeal in her eyes that had always kept her a young woman and good company for Mary Amber, even though her hair had long been gray.

“Might just as well be that as anything else,” he responded, affably, willing to drop into whatever rÔle was set for him in this most unexpected byplay.

“And you wouldn’t mind if I should call you Dick?” she asked with a wistful look in her blue eyes.

“Like nothing better,” he assented glibly, and found his own heart warming to this confiding stranger lady.“That’s beautiful of you!” She put out a shy hand, and laid it lightly on the edge of his cuff. “You don’t know how much obliged I am. You see, Mary Amber hasn’t ever quite believed he was coming—Dick, I mean—and she’s been so kind, and helped me get the dinner and all. I just couldn’t bear to tell her he wasn’t coming.”

The young soldier stopped short in the middle of the road, and whistled.

“Horrors!” he exclaimed in dismay “Are there other guests? Who is Mary Amber?”

“Why, she’s just my neighbor, who played with you—I mean with Dick when he was here visiting as a child a good many years ago. I’m afraid he wasn’t always as polite to her then as a boy ought to be to a little girl; and—well, she’s never liked him very well. I was afraid she would say, ‘I told you so’ if she thought he didn’t come. It won’t be necessary for me to tell any lies, you know. I’ll just say, ‘Dick, this is Mary Amber; I suppose you don’t remember her,’ and that’ll be all. You don’t mind, do you? It won’t take long to eat dinner.”

“But I’m a terrible mess to meet a girl!” he exclaimed uneasily, looking down deprecatingly at himself. “I thought it was just you. This uniform’s three sizes too large, and needs a drink. Besides,” he passed a speculative hand over his smoothly shaven chin, “I—don’t care for girls!” There was a deep frown between his eyes, and the bitter look had come back on his face. Miss Marilla thought he looked as if he might be going to run away.

“Oh, that’s all right!” said Miss Marilla anxiously. “Neither does Mary Amber like men. She says they’re all a selfish conceited lot. You needn’t have much to do with her. Just eat your dinner and tell anything you want to about the war. We won’t bother you to talk much. Come; this is the house, and the turkey must be on the table getting cold by now.”

She swung open the gate, and laid a persuasive hand on the shabby sleeve; and the young man reluctantly followed her up the path to the front door.