“I have no idea of going through dinner without letting you and old Ed know all about us!” said Andy as he took his place at Molly’s hospitable board.

“What about you?” asked Molly, who was growing deceitful, her husband feared.

“About Nance and me! I can’t keep it any longer,” declared the happy young doctor. Nance kept her eyes on her plate but her mouth was twitching with amusement.

“What about you and Nance?” solemnly asked the professor.

“Why, we’re engaged!”

“No! Not really?” and Edwin grinned.

“Oh, Andy! I’m so glad!” and Molly reached a hand out to her two friends, who were perforce placed across the table from each other since there were only four for dinner.

Nance got up and kissed her hostess. “Oh, Molly, you are too lovely! Don’t you know that I know that Andy and I have not fooled you one moment? Don’t I see brandy peaches on the side table all ready for dessert, and don’t you know that I know that those precious articles are only brought out on highdays and holidays? Isn’t that fruit cake I smell, that you know perfectly well you made and put away for next Christmas so it would be ripe and get better and better?”

“Well, I had to express my feelings somehow, and how did I know that you and Andy were going to tell your secret this very evening? I knew I mustn’t say a thing until you two said something, and if I could not say anything, I could at least feed you.”

“All I can say, Andy, is that if your experience in choosing a girl from that class of 19— is as fortunate as mine, you will be a pretty happy man, and by Jove, I believe you are running me a mighty close second,” and to the astonishment of his wife, as Edwin Green was certainly a far from demonstrative man, he actually jumped from his seat and embraced Nance. Then Andy felt that he must kiss Molly, and Kizzie coming in at this juncture almost dropped the dish she was carrying.

“Sich a-carryin’s on I never seed. I’m a-thinking you folks had better sort yo’selves,” and the girl went off chortling.

“Now tell me your plans!” demanded Molly when they settled down to dinner. Strange to say, they had got rather mixed up in the promiscuous embracing that had been going on, and Edwin and Andy had changed places. Edwin found himself seated at Molly’s side while Andy had greatly disarranged the table by plumping himself down by his Nance.

“We are to be married immediately,” announced Andy stoutly.

Nance gasped. The fact was they had been so busy explaining the past and living in the present while the fire had died so low in the library, that the future had not been touched upon.

“Of course I may start for France at any time now, but before I go I mean to get me a war bride. It will be pretty bad leaving her, but then the war can’t last forever, and I have decided it is my duty to go help, and I fancy it still is. When Uncle Sam steps in, maybe he can finish up things in a hurry. Then I can get back to Nance.”

“Get back to me, indeed! If you think you are going without me, Andy McLean, you are vastly mistaken. If it is your duty to go help, it is my duty, too. Oh, I know I am no trained nurse, but I can do lots of other things. Dr. Flint says I am better than most trained nurses——”

Nance stopped short. She should not have mentioned Dr. Flint. Only suppose it had hurt Andy’s feelings! Not a bit of it!

“Bully for Flint!” cried the accepted lover. “Oh, Nance, would you go with me?”

“I can scrub and cook and take care of babies.”

“I don’t know about that,” teased Andy.

“But you will always be near and pull them out of the water when I let them fall in,” suggested Nance. “Won’t you?”

“That I will! Just as near as I can get!” and Andy hitched his chair a little closer, thereby disarranging the table even more than he had done before. But although Molly was a very careful housekeeper and most particular about the looks of her table, she cared not one whit, but beamed on Andy as though he were the pink of propriety instead of a naughty boy.

What a change a little lovering had made in the appearance of both Nance and Andy! The girl’s clear skin was flushed and her eyes sparkling. The corners of her mouth had no trace of downward tendency now. The years of sadness and confinement spent in nursing her father and mother were forgotten. Nance had come into her own—her woman’s heritage: to be beloved, to be guarded and cherished; at the same time to know that she was to be the companion, the helpmeet. As for Andy,—he beamed with joy. His face had lost the stern lines that had so distressed his mother. He looked again like the boy he was, not like the tired, disappointed man she had known of late.

Nance had no romantic notions of what life in France meant in that early spring of 1917. She knew that there was no room for drones and unproductive consumers in that war-worn country. She knew that in marrying Andy and going with his unit she was to face work, privations, danger, even death; but with her eyes open she was determined to see it through.

“I would enlist in the United States army,” Andy said to his host after dinner, as they lounged in the den and puffed away at their comforting pipes, “but I feel that I can be of more good right now in France where they are crying out for surgeons.”

“It can’t be many days now before war is declared,” sighed Edwin. “By jiminy! I hate myself for not being able to get in the game.”

“Too bad, old man! A fellow with a wife and two children has to think of them.”

“Of course! I wouldn’t let Molly know how I feel about it for any thing. I am not so young as I was, but I am stronger now than I was as a youth. As for my eyes—they are good enough eyes in glasses and my bald head would be no drawback.” Edwin always would call his sparsely covered top “bald,” but Molly, by diligent care, had made two blades of grass grow where only one had grown before, and with a microscope one could see the beginnings of a fuzzy crop of hair, at least so the fond wife insisted.

“I bet she would say go, if it were put to her,” said Andy.

“I’ll not do it, though! It wouldn’t be fair.”

“Well, if it is put up to her, I bet on Molly Brown!”