“R. F. D., late as usual,” laughed Molly, as Mr. Bud Woodsmall’s very ramshackle Ford runabout came careening through the lane and up the hill to the yard gate. “I fancy he has had to stop and talk war at every mail box on his route.”

“I think I’ll go meet him,” said Professor Edwin Green, rather reluctantly arising from the chaise longue that seemed to have been built to fit his lack of curves, he declared. He had been sitting on the porch of the bungalow, eyes half closed to shut out everything from his vision but the picture of Molly holding the sleeping baby in her arms.

“You know you want to gossip with him—now ’fess up!”

“Well, I do like to hear his views of the situation in Europe. They are original, at least. He says Yankee capitalists are the cause of it all. Don’t you want me to put Mildred down? She has been asleep for half an hour,” and the young husband and father stood for a moment and looked down on his treasures with what Judy Kean always called his faithful-collie-dog eyes.

“I know I oughtn’t to hold her while she is asleep, but she seems so wonderful I can’t bear to let her go. I think she is growing more like you, Edwin.”

“Like me! Nonsense! That would be a sad thing to have wished on the poor innocent when there are so many handsome folks in the Carmichael and Brown family from whom she could inherit real beauty.”

“But Edwin, you are handsome, I think. You are so noble looking.”

“All right, honey, have it your own way,” and he stooped and kissed her. “I will allow that the baby has inherited my bald head if you like—Hi there!” he called to Mr. Woodsmall, who was preparing to unlock the mail box, “I’ll come get it,” and he sprinted down the walk where the garrulous postman held him enthralled for a good fifteen minutes. A blue envelope with a foreign postmark told him there was a letter from Julia Kean that would be eagerly welcomed by Molly, but there was no stopping the flow of R.F.D.’s eloquence. The causes of the war being thoroughly threshed out, he finally took his reluctant departure.

“A letter from Judy Kean! Now you will have to put the baby down!”

So little Mildred was tenderly placed in her basket on the porch and Molly opened the voluminous epistle from the beloved Judy.

“Oh, Edwin, she is not coming home! I was afraid she would want to do something Judyesque. Only listen!” and Molly read the Giverny letter to her husband.

“What do you think Kent will say to this? I know he is very uneasy about her anyhow since the war broke out, and now—well, I’m glad I’m not in his shoes. She is not very considerate of him, I must say.”

“Oh, you men folks!” laughed Molly. “I can’t see how she could leave France until she knows something about her mother and father, and after all, I don’t believe Kent and Judy are engaged.”

“Not engaged! What do you think Kent has been doing this whole year in Paris if he wasn’t getting engaged?”

“Studying Architecture at the Beaux Arts. Sometimes persons can know one another a long time and be together a lot and not get engaged,” she teased. It was a very well-known fact that Professor Edwin Green had been in love with Molly Brown for at least five years, and maybe longer, before he put the all important question.

“Yes, I know, but then——”

“Then what? My brother Kent is certainly not able to support a wife yet, and maybe they are opposed to long engagements.”

“Well, all the same I am sorry for Kent. It was bad enough when you went abroad and the ocean was between us and I knew you were being well taken care of by your dear mother,—but just suppose it had been war time and you had been alone! The news from France is very grave. It looks as though the Germans would eat Christmas dinner in Paris as they boast they will.”

“Oh, Edwin, no!” and Molly turned pale.

“Well, look at these head lines in to-day’s paper. It looks very ominous. When did you say you were expecting Kent home?”

“By to-morrow at latest. He wrote Mother he was to stay some time in New York to try to land a job that looked very promising.”

“Here she comes now!” he exclaimed, his face lighting up with joy as it always did when his mother-in-law appeared on the scene.

Mrs. Brown was coming through the orchard from Chatsworth. Her hair had turned a little greyer since Molly’s marriage, but not much; her step was still light and active; her grey eyes as full of life; and in her heart the same eternal youth.

“Well, children! Did you get any mail? How is my precious little granddaughter? I’ve a letter from Kent. It just did beat him home. Paul ’phoned from Louisville that he is in town now, just arrived and will be here with him this afternoon. I am so excited!”

Dear Mrs. Brown’s life was made up of such excitements now: her children always going and returning. Mildred, Mrs. Crittenden Rutledge, had left for Iowa only two days before, having spent two months with her little family at Chatsworth; now Kent was almost home; and in less than a month the Greens would make their annual move to Wellington. Sue, the eldest daughter, married to young Cyrus Clay, lived within a few miles of Chatsworth and seemed the only one who was a fixture. Paul’s newspaper work kept him in Louisville most of the time and John, the doctor, made flying visits to his home but had to make his headquarters in the city for fear of missing patients. Ernest, the eldest son, was threatening to come home and settle at Chatsworth, but that was still an uncertainty.

“I must read you Judy’s letter, Mother. I know you will feel as uneasy as we do about her. Edwin thinks she should come home, but I think she could hardly leave, not knowing something more definite about her mother and father, who may be bottled up in Germany indefinitely.”

“Only think of the sizzle Mr. Kean will make when they finally draw the cork,” laughed Mrs. Brown; but when Molly read the whole of Judy’s letter to her, the laughter left her countenance and she looked very solemn and disturbed.

“Poor Kent!” she sighed.

“I wonder what he will do,” from Molly.

“Do? Why, he will do what the men of his blood should do!” Mrs. Brown held her head very high and her delicate nostrils quivered in the way her family knew meant either anger or high resolve. “He will go to France and either stay and protect Judy or bring her back to his mother.”

“But, Mother, are you going to ask this of him? Maybe he won’t think it is the right thing to do.”

“Of course, I am not going to ask it of him. I just know the ‘mettle of his pasture.’”

“But the expense!”

“Expense! Molly, you don’t sound like yourself. What is expense when your loved ones are in danger?”

“But I can’t think that Judy could be in real danger.”

“I can’t think anything else. You surely have not read the morning paper. The Germans are advancing so rapidly.... The atrocities in Belgium! Ugh! I can’t contemplate our Judy being anywhere in their reach.”

“But, Mother, they must be exaggerated! People could not do what they say they have done, not good, kind German soldiers.”

“Molly! Molly! Your goodness will even let you love the Germans. I am not made that way. The Anglo Saxon in me is so uppermost and I feel such a boiling and bubbling in my veins that nothing but my grey hairs keeps me from joining the Red Cross myself and helping the Allies!”

“Well, then you don’t blame Miss Judy Kean,” laughed Professor Green, who never loved his mother-in-law more than when, as old Aunt Mary expressed it, “her nose was a-wuckin’.”

“Blame her! No, indeed! If I were her age, I’d do exactly what she is doing, but I should certainly have expected Molly’s father to come over and protect me while I was being so foolhardy.”

“Judy doesn’t say she is going as a nurse,” said Molly, referring to the letter. “Jo Williams is to fly and Judy seems uncertain what she is going to do,—just see the fight, as far as I can make out. I know Judy so well I just can’t feel uneasy about her. You mustn’t think I am mercenary, Mother, or careless of my friend. Judy always lands on her feet and is as much of an adept in getting out of scrapes as she is in getting in them.”

“My darling, of course I didn’t mean you were mercenary,” cried Mrs. Brown, seeing in Molly’s blue eyes a little hurt look at the vigorous tone she had taken when Molly merely suggested expense. “I just think in your desire to think well of every one, nations as well as individuals, that you are blind to the terrors of this war. If Judy will only go to Sally Bolling, she will be taken care of. I fancy Sally is at La Roche Craie now.”

“Oh, I had forgotten to think of what this must mean to Cousin Sally!” exclaimed Molly. “The truth of the matter is that it is so peaceful here my imagination cannot picture what it is over there. I am growing selfish with contentment. Of course Philippe d’OchtÈ will join his regiment and poor Cousin Sally and the Marquis will suffer agonies over him.”

“Yes and over France!” said Edwin solemnly. “I remember so well a conversation I had with the Marquis d’OchtÈ on the subject of his country. I believe he really and truly puts his country above even his adored wife and son. That is more patriotism than I could be capable of——”

“Not a bit of it, my dear Edwin,” broke in Mrs. Brown.

“Molly and your little baby Mildred are but a part of your country, and if the time should come and your country called you, you would answer the call just as I hope my own sons would.”

“Oh, Mother, you are a Spartan! I am not so brave, I am afraid,” said Molly. “Even now at the thought of war, I am thanking God my Mildred baby is a girl.”

Little Mildred, at mention of her name, although it would be many a day before she would know what her name was, awakened and gave an inarticulate gurgle. Mrs. Brown dropped the rÔle of Spartan Mother and turned into a doting grandmother in the twinkling of an eye.

“And was um little tootsie wootsies cold? Come to your Granny and let her warm them. Molly, this baby has grown a foot, I do believe, and look what a fine, strong, straight back she has! And does oo want your Granny to rub your back? Only look, her eyes have brown lights in them! I said all the time she would have brown eyes.”

“And not Molly’s blue eyes! Oh, Mother, that is very bad news to me. Why, the baby’s eyes are as blue as the sea now. They could not change,” and Edwin Green peered into his offspring’s face with such intentness that the little thing began to whimper.

The proper indignation being expressed by the females and the baby dangled until smiles came and a crow, Mrs. Brown informed the ignorant father that all young animals have blue eyes and there is no determining the actual colour of a baby’s eyes until it is several months old, but that the minute brown or golden lights begin to appear in blue eyes, you can get ready to declare for a brown-eyed youngster.

“Well, she will surely have Molly’s hair,” he insisted.

“That we can’t tell, either,” said the all-knowing grandmother. “You see, she is almost bald now except for this tiny fringe that is rapidly being worn off in the back. That does seem a little pinkish.”

“Pinkish! Oh, Mother-in-law, what a word to express my Molly’s hair!”

“Can’t you see she is getting even with you for making Mildred almost cry?” laughed Molly. “I know she is going to have my hair because when you slip a little bit of blue under that little lock that is on the side, where it hasn’t rubbed off, the ‘pink’ comes out quite plainly. My Mildred will be a belle. I have always heard it said that a girl with brown eyes and golden hair is born to be a belle. Oh, yes, I will call the baby’s hair golden although I have always called my own red.”

“I don’t know whether I want her to be a belle or not,” objected Edwin. “She might be frivolous.”

“Frivolous with your eyes! Heavens, Daddy, she couldn’t be!”

Mrs. Brown contentedly smiled and rocked the baby, who crowed and cooed and kicked her pretty pink tootsies. The sun shone on the orchard home and a particularly obliging mocking bird burst into song from one of the gnarled old apple trees, heavy with its luscious fruit. Mocking birds are supposed not to sing in August, but sometimes they do, and when they do, their song is as wonderful and welcome as an unlooked-for legacy.

Molly looked over the fields of waving blue grass to the dark beech woods that bordered the pasture, a feeling of great happiness and contentment in her heart. How peaceful and sweet was life! She leaned against her husband, who put an ever-ready arm around her, and together they gazed on the fruitful landscape. Mrs. Brown crooned to the baby a song ever dear to her own children and one that had been sung to her by her own negro mammy.

How could whole countries be at war and such peace reign in any spot on the globe?

The whirr of an approaching motor awoke them from their musings and stopped the delightful song before one-third of the stanzas had been sung. It was Kent with John in the doctor’s little runabout.

“My boy! my boy!” and Mrs. Brown dropped the baby in her basket and flew across the grass to greet the long-absent Kent.

“I couldn’t wait for Paul but had to get old Dr. John to bring me out. Mumsy, how plump and pink you are. I declare you look almost as young as the new baby,” said Kent after the first raptures of greeting were over. “And Molly, you look great! And ’Fessor Green, I declare you are getting fat. I bet you have gained at least three-quarters of a pound since you got married. Positively obese!”

“You haven’t said much about the baby,” objected Molly.

“Well, there’s not much to say, is there? She is an omnivorous biped, I gather, from the two feet I can see and her evident endeavor to eat them, at least, I fancy that is why she is kicking so high. She has got Edwin’s er—er—well—his high forehead——”

“She is not nearly so bald-headed as you were yourself,” declared his mother. “You were such a lovely baby, Kent, the loveliest of all my babies, I believe. I always adored a bald-headed baby and you had a head like a little billiard ball.”

They all laughed at this and Kent confessed that if he had been bald-headed himself, he believed the little Mildred must be, after all, very charming.

“Any letters for me?” he asked, and Molly thought she detected a note of anxiety below all the nonsense he had been talking.

“No, I have not seen any.”

“Well, have you heard from—from Judy Kean?”

“Yes,” confessed Molly. “I got a letter to-day.”

“Please may I see it?”

“Yes, of course you may.”

But Molly felt a great reluctance to show Julia Kean’s letter to her brother. She knew very well he was uneasy already about their friend and was certain this letter would only heighten his concern. Kent was looking brown and sturdy; he seemed to her to have grown even taller than the six feet one he already measured when he went abroad. His boyish countenance had taken on more purpose and his jaw had an added squareness. His deep set grey eyes had a slight cloud in them that Molly and her mother hated to see.

“It is Judy, of course,” they said to themselves.

“I landed my job in New York,” he said, as he opened the little blue envelope.

“Splendid!” exclaimed Molly.

Mrs. Brown tried to say splendid, too, but the thought came to her: “Another one going away from home!” and she could only put her arm around her boy’s neck and press a kiss on his brown head.

They were all very quiet while Kent read the letter. Dr. John, alone, seemed disinterested. He very professionally poked the infant in the ribs to see how fat she had grown and, also, much to the indignation of Molly, went through some tests for idiocy, which, of course, the tiny baby could not pass.