Joffre was in Boston on Saturday, the 12th of May. Viviani also was there, and some others, but the marshal, the hero of the Marne, was the attraction. Eve acknowledged as much to me on the evening before the event.

"I do want to see him," she said, "and I suppose you'll think it foolish, but I'm going up. Probably I shall cry when I see him. Adam," she added somewhat wistfully, "you don't want to go, I suppose? Father will take us in his car—the new one."

That about the "new one" was plainly nothing more than bait.

"Why should I want to go," I said, "except to go with you? I always want to do that. And I should be glad to be with your father, but no more in his new one than on our bank at the shore. Not so much. There is much to do here. Why should I want to go, Eve? I don't want to cry."

She laughed. "No reason, Adam, unless it is to stir your imagination."

"My imagination is stirred sufficiently here. You know that I detest crowds, and parades. And I was going to plant again to-morrow."

She sighed softly, and smiled adorably. "Well, Adam, plant then. I knew it would bore you to go. The middle of a crowd watching a parade is no place for you. I should love to have you with me, but I think you had better not come. I don't want you to cry." And she laughed a little, unsteadily.

"I might," I said somewhat gruffly. "It is conceivable. But there is one thing. I hate to speak of it. Your father ought not to go off on these long trips any more without a chauffeur. There may be hard work to do, and he is—not young, Eve. Besides—"

"He is going to take a chauffeur," said Eve, interrupting me hurriedly. "I think it almost breaks his heart to acknowledge it, but he realizes that he ought to. Of course that wouldn't make any difference about your going."

I shook my head. It was no part of my objection that I might be called upon to do some hard work. I had planned to do a good deal of hard work at home.

So Eve set off about eleven the next morning alone with her father and the chauffeur. Old Goodwin was in the driver's seat, and it did not seem likely that the chauffeur would have anything to do. And I stood in my garden clothes, leaning on my hoe, and waved a good-bye to them, feeling half regretful and wholly self-reproachful; and Eve made her father stop, and she called me, and I came running, and she leaned out and kissed me, and she went off smiling. I looked after them, and they had not gone more than a hundred yards or so when they stopped again, and Tom Ellis and Cecily came out of their door and got into the back seat with Eve. And I smiled, and turned, and went back to my garden, thinking that the best of women—and I gave a little start, for it had occurred to me that the chauffeur was a Frenchman. And I wondered if they—but of course they did. Such things do not happen by accident—with Old Goodwin and Eve.

It was cold for the season. It had been cold and wet for three weeks, and my corn was not up, nor my melons that I had put in three weeks before, nor my beans. My experiment with melons has not yet been a failure if it has not been a success this year. I was doubtful about the corn, so I dug up a kernel, and I found it sprouted, and I put it back and covered it. My peas were up, and doing bravely, and the beans were about breaking through, for the earth was cracked all along the rows. And I got out my sections of stout wire fencing, and put them in place along the rows of peas. They take the place of pea-brush, and are much easier to put up and to take down. The fencing is fastened to stout posts, and the posts have pieces of iron, about a foot and a half long, shaped much like a marlin-spike, bolted to them for driving into the ground. I can take my sledgehammer and drive the posts, and get a row of peas wired in a tenth the time needed to set brush, and the fencing is much less expensive, in the long run. My fences have done service for thirteen years already, and they are perfectly good.

So I fussed around among the peas, and planted more corn and more beans, and more melons, and a row of chard, and two rows of okra, and some other things. I often think that the place for tall green okra is the flower garden. The blossoms are beautiful, delicate things, more beautiful than most of the hollyhocks. And now and then I stopped my planting—a man has to rest his back—and I leaned on my hoe or my rake or whatever I happened to have in my hand, and I thought my thoughts. They were many, and they were not, at such moments, of my planting.

The harbor was almost empty still. There was but one fisherman's boat and two motor boats, little fellows, not suited to patrolling. And the sky was gray, and getting darker, and the winter gulls flying across, and wheeling and screaming harshly. Occasionally a gull beat across my garden, flying low and screaming his harsh note. I watched them, and envied them until I saw a fish-hawk sailing high up among the clouds. Then I envied him: his calmness and serenity, and his powers of wing and eye, seeing the swimming fish from that height, and perfectly secure. Then, naturally enough, I thought of aeroplanes, sailing and circling like the great hawk, and seeing their prey as surely as he. I never had the slightest wish to go up in an aeroplane. The hawk seems secure in his sailing, the aeroplane does not, and I may envy the hawk while shrinking unaccountably from the aeroplane. But if they can see the submarine from up there, and can pounce upon it as surely as the hawk strikes his fish—well, if we had a plague of submarines, it would be a comfort to see a hawk now and then. And I thought of Jimmy Wales and Bobby Leverett and Ogilvie searching the waters for that which was not.

Jimmy has put in here every few days. It is hard to see why, but we have seen a good deal of Ogilvie and Bobby, and Bobby has seen more or less of Elizabeth Radnor. She is still rather a mystery to me, a girl that Mrs. Goodwin chanced upon somewhere, and took a great fancy to. That is not strange, that Miss Radnor should have been fancied, but it is strange that Mrs. Goodwin should have taken the fancy, and that she should have asked her here for an indefinite stay. Mrs. Goodwin did not use to fancy obscure teachers of athletics or gymnastics or dancing in girls' schools, and Miss Radnor is or was something of the kind. She may be giving lessons in dancing to Mrs. Goodwin for all I know—or to Bobby. It is not of much consequence. If Bobby should really come upon submarines, it would be of little consequence to him.

Thinking upon submarines, there came into my head the account that I had just seen in the London "Times" of the capture of a submarine by a trawler. As I recollect it, the trawler was going about her business in the North Sea—a business not unconnected with submarines—when suddenly a submarine began to emerge from the deep just ahead. The trawler put on all the speed she had time for, and rammed the submarine amidships, sliding up on its body half her length, so that the captain found himself well-nigh stranded near the periscope. Whereupon he called for an axe, and smashed that periscope into scrap iron and fragments of glass. The trawler then slid off, and the submarine opened, and the crew poured forth upon her deck and forthwith surrendered, and the trawler towed them into an English port. Thinking upon this, I laughed aloud to the gulls and the hawk. I had refrained from going to Boston to have my imagination stirred by looking at a parade and listening to the bands!

To stir my imagination! I had but to picture to myself the destroyer fight in the Channel on the night of April 20, two English destroyers, Swift and Broke, against six German destroyers, in the darkness of a black night; a five-minute battle, but those five minutes crowded full. Ramming, torpedoing, repelling boarders, fighting with pistols and cutlases and bayonets, responding to a treacherous call to save—it was all worthy of the times of Drake. Stir my imagination! I found myself starting forward and brandishing the hoe, my breath coming fast, and my eyes, I have no doubt, flashing fire. I laughed again. It was raining. It had been raining, I suppose, for five minutes at least, and I had not known it. I gathered up my tools, put them in the shed, and went into the house to change my clothes, and to consume my pint of milk, while my daughter, opposite me, consumed hers—and some other things besides.

After luncheon I put on my rubber boots and went out. It was still raining, a good hard drizzle from the southeast. It suited me well enough, and I wandered the shores all the afternoon, or stood in the shelter of a tree and looked out over the bay. I liked it. There is something soothing and at the same time stirring in such a day and such a place. There was a good heavy breeze, and the seas marched, and the sound of their breaking, and the fresh wet wind on my cheek, and the gray veil of rain over the rolling water, with not a sail or so much as a smudge of smoke in sight—well, it is hardly worth while to say how it affects me. Those who feel as I do will not need to be told, and for those who do not it would be useless. But man seems a little thing, and the affairs of man of no importance—absolutely none.

As the afternoon wore on, the drizzle became less and finally stopped, although it was still gray. And then the clouds began to break, and I wandered homeward along the shore, and I climbed the steep path, and sat me on the seat under my great pine, where I could see the water and the sun when he was ready to show his face. A long time I sat there, and I heard no sound from the harbor except the screams of the gulls, and no sound from the land except the sound of the wind blowing among the needles of the pine above my head. And at last the gulls were gone, and the sun peeped out from under the edge of the ragged and scudding cloud, and I felt a gentle touch upon my arm. And I turned my head and looked, and there was Pukkie; Pukkie, my little son, my well-beloved.

I put both arms around him, and I hugged him shamelessly. I was glad to feel that he hugged me in turn, and hugged me hard. Usually I put my arm around him gently and surreptitiously, for I would not draw his attention to the act. I dread the time when he will shrink from my embraces; but that time does not seem to have come yet.

"Oh, Pukkie!" I cried. "My dear little son, where in the world did you come from?"

He laughed delightedly. "From school," he said; and he nestled against me.

"But how did you get here? Your mother went—but have you seen her? Where is she?"

He glanced up over my shoulder, and smiled. "Turn around, daddy."

And there came from over my head a low ripple of laughter, and I looked up into Eve's lovely, smiling face. She slipped down upon the seat beside me, and I reached out for her hand, that was already reaching out for mine, and her fingers clasped mine close.

"My goodness, Eve," I said, "but I'm glad to have you back—and Pukkie."

"You're no gladder to have me than I am to get back. I don't ever want to go anywhere without you, Adam. But I've seen him—seen Joffre—and I waved with all my might, and I cried. I knew I should."

"And Pukkie?"

"Oh, father stopped for him on the way up. He said until the end of the year was too long to wait, and he'd bring him back in two days. The headmaster didn't want to let him go, but father generally has his way. And it began to rain, but we didn't mind."

"And when you saw Joffre you wept?"

"Not exactly. There was a young fellow standing in the crowd quietly, with his arm in a sling. He was hardly more than a boy, and he looked sick. He had beautiful sombre eyes, with a look in them that—well, as if he had seen so much, and as if he did not quite understand. You should have seen his eyes. Like a wild thing. And when Joffre came, I thought he would go crazy. He waved his cap frantically, and the tears just streamed out of his eyes, and you should have heard him. Joffre heard, and saw, and he leaned out of the car, and he saluted that boy. My! That boy was proud. You can guess—that was when I cried. And we got him into the car with us. He didn't look able to go far. He was a soldier who had been with the Canadians over there, a Frenchman by birth. He told us a little about it, but he didn't seem to want to talk. He had been wounded, and sick, and had come back over here on sick leave or something of the kind. And he and Lejeune, the chauffeur, got to talking, and we took him home. He wants to get back into the fighting as soon as he can. And when he got out, Lejeune got out too. He was going to enlist."

"Left you on the spot?"

Eve laughed. "Yes," she said, "but I rather guess that it wasn't unexpected. I shouldn't be surprised if that was what father took him for. At any rate, father just smiled, and gave them both his blessing, and told Lejeune to come back when the war was over. And he gave him some money, and said that they could divide it between them."

"How much, I wonder?"

"I don't know how much, but a good deal, considerably more than a hundred dollars. He had a note already written, too, a 'character,' as the maids call it, saying that he was a good chauffeur. Then Tom—he had been getting uneasy—said that he wanted to be in on this too, but he wasn't so well prepared as father. And he gave them all he had with him, except a dollar or two. That was too much for the French boy, and he waved his cap again, and cried, 'Vive la France! Vive l'AmÉrique!' with the tears streaming down his face again. And I cried some more, and so did Cecily. Oh, I had a lovely time, Adam."

Eve was laughing again, and pressing closer to me. "That French boy was a machinist before he went to the war, and Lejeune is a good chauffeur, and I shouldn't wonder if they'd both get into driving when they get over there. I hope so. But he wasn't thinking of that, the French boy. He is ready to go back, when his time comes, and meet his fate with a high heart. With a high heart, Adam. Oh," she cried, "don't you think it is stirring—just a little—to the imagination? Don't you?" And she gave me a little shake.

I nodded soberly, and hugged Pukkie closer. "I rejoice, Eve," I said irrelevantly, "that Pukkie is not yet eleven."

Eve did not reply directly. Her eyes filled with tears, and she drew Pukkie around between us. "I suppose it is selfish," she said. "If a French machinist goes—only about eight or nine years older than Pukkie—and can stir me all up with the idea of it—why—"

She did not finish, so I did not know what she would have asked. But I could guess.

"War is wicked," I said. "There is no novelty in that idea. But if a wicked war is started, it may be more wicked to keep out of it than to go in, and there may be more misery involved in keeping out than in going in. I don't know about this one, and I don't believe that anybody knows. One thing I do know, and that is that wars will continue to occur at intervals as long as human nature is what it is. Man is a fighting animal. When he ceases to be, the time of his fall will have arrived. I have spoken."

Eve laughed merrily. "But you have not finished. Go on, oracle."

"No more from the oracle. Only a purely personal observation. I could go into the fighting with a sort of a titillation—an unholy joy in fighting for its own sake, quite apart from any feeling for any cause. I believe that that is the feeling which animates most men who volunteer to fight. Of course they choose their side from conviction. At least, it is to be hoped that they do. But as for the actual combat, there is a joy in the fight—why, that alone accounts for all our games, at bottom."

Eve was looking at me doubtfully. "But, Adam," she said slowly, "you don't mean to—you aren't going to—"

I shook my head. "I have no such intention. Make your mind easy. I have a dependent family. I don't know what you would do without my efforts to support you. It would be a terrible misfortune if you were cast upon your father's shoulders. You might starve."

Eve seemed to be amused. But Pukkie had been getting uneasy, and he began to squirm. Then he seized my arm.

"Look, daddy. See that big schooner. I never saw her before. What is it?"

I looked. A great white schooner was headed in, and she was almost at the entrance of the harbor. The wind had fallen light with the approach of the sun to his setting; the schooner had all her light sails set and came on fast. Suddenly the light sails began to come off, slacking down, wrinkling, and gathered in, and stowed, as a man would take off his coat. Before one was well in another would start slacking down, wrinkling, gathered in, and stowed, almost as fast as I tell it. That meant a big crew well trained. All her kites were stowed, and she began rounding into the wind, letting her jibs go as she came around. She shot a long way, but stopped at last, and her chain rattled out, and she began to drift astern. Then her foresail came down steadily, and before it was down, sailors swarmed out upon the footropes of the mainboom, and the great mainsail began to come down, slowly and steadily, gathered in as it came by the men upon the footropes. By the time all her chain was paid out, and she was finally at rest, all her sails were furled, and they were getting out the covers.

A shining mahogany launch was dropped into the water, run back to the gangway, and a girl ran lightly down the steps.

"Elizabeth Radnor," said Eve, wondering. "What can she be doing there?"

"Perhaps the owners take lessons in dancing," I suggested.

Eve smiled. "She gives lessons in swimming too," she said.

A man followed Miss Radnor. He seemed strangely familiar.

"Bobby!" cried Eve. "I think it's funny. I'm sure it's Bobby."

I was sure it was Bobby. It might be funny, but it was not strange. The launch made for Old Goodwin's landing at forty miles an hour.

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