Time of the Singing of Birds E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Pretty, petite Margaret Roselle is overjoyed when Barney Vance returns safely from war. Then Barney tells her that their friend "Stormy" is missing behind enemy lines - and that he has decided to return to enemy territory to find him! Faced with the reality of the danger in Barney's chosen mission, Margaret finds strength and peace in her undying faith.

No matter what happens, she is sure God will take care of both her and the man she loves...

Leseprobe

Time of the Singing of Birds 

by Grace Livingston Hill

First published in 1944

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

[email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

TIME OF THE SINGING OF BIRDS

 by 

Chapter 1

The birds were singing madly in the old orchard around the house when Barney Vance woke up that first morning back in the old house where he was born and brought up, and where, two years before, he had kissed his mother good-bye to go across the seas and fight. Now he was Lieutenant Vance and had been invalided out of the army and sent home to recuperate, with little probability that he would be called back. His strong young body had taken a terrible beating during his last engagement with the enemy, and the doctor had thought there was grave doubt whether it would ever get back to the old vigor where he could hope to go on and continue fighting. And he had been tired. So tired! And glad to rest a bit, though in his heart of hearts he had the determination to be back on the job again as soon as he recovered his normal strength. But now he was here, and it was good to rest. It was like crawling into a foxhole when the enemy got too strenuous, and he was temporarily out of ammunition. It was good to find a real haven. That was how he had felt as he swung off the midnight train last night at the little flag station, where he knew he would have to walk over a mile, to make the old home. He was none too ready for that dark lonely walk, but it was home, and it was where he had a right to be, and he wanted to get there, so he had walked. He had stumbled up to the porch seat after sounding the knocker, and dropped down with his head leaning against the clapboards of the old house, his eyes closed.

Of course he knew that his mother was gone. Word of her death had come to him while he was still in the hospital, recovering from his desperate wounds, and had much delayed his chances of restoration to health. But he had fought that long battle out, and recognized it as one of the inevitable chances of war he had taken when he bid his mother good-bye. She herself had seen it, and reminded him that she might not be there when he returned, reminded him that she would be watching for him in heaven. He had known that she would not be in the old farmhouse to meet him. He had reminded himself of that fact again and again during the long journey. And yet he had wanted to come.

There would be nobody at the old home to meet him but the two old servants, old Joel Babbit and his wife, Roxy, who had been in charge of the house and the farm ever since he could remember. That is, he hoped they were still there. For after his mother was gone there had been no one to write to him about things but old Roxy, and she wasn’t much of a correspondent. Still he had hoped. Roxy used to love him, and next to his mother would be more like homefolks than anybody he knew. And so he had kept on hoping through every hard step of that mile and a half he had walked from the station.

And Roxy had come to answer that knock. He had known she would if she was alive. And if she wasn’t, what did it matter? That was how he felt as he slumped to the porch seat and waited.

And then there was her step, in the old felt slippers, down at the heel, shuffling along, a candle in her hand, to supplement the light that she had turned on at the head of the stairs.

Roxy had brought him in and crooned over him, called him her dear boy, and drawn him into the old front room, where she had always kept a fire laid ready for lighting should he ever return.

“I promised yer mommy, ye know,” she said as she knelt and touched her candle to the kindling and whipped up a fire in no time.

Of course it wasn’t cold weather, for those birds wouldn’t have been singing so joyously now this morning if it were, but he remembered the fire had felt good to his stiff joints and aching muscles last night, and the crackling of the flames as they snapped the dry old twigs had sounded cheerily as if they were welcoming him, even though there were only two very humble retainers besides themselves to do it.

Those were the first impressions he had as he gradually came awake. Something cheery, in spite of the fact that it was all sad, because his mother was gone and wouldn’t be back there anymore—wouldn’t be there to ask him all about his experiences, nor to mourn over his wounds, nor worry lest there might be aftereffects. She had gone to another world, where wounds down here didn’t matter anymore. Oh, she would be sympathetic with his worries even now, up in heaven, where he was sure she had gone! But they wouldn’t pierce her own soul the way his bumps and bruises used to do even when he was just a little child and fell down on the old door stone at the kitchen steps, and skinned his knee. He always knew those bruises of his hurt his mother even more than they did him. He came to know that at a very early age when he watched the slow tears travel down her smooth cheek as she bathed the blood away and put on the lotion, wincing herself because it smarted him. He remembered asking her then, “Does it hurt your fingers when you put it on my cut?” And she had smiled and shaken away the tears, and said, “No, it doesn’t hurt Mother.”

“Then why does you cwy?”

And she had answered tenderly, “Oh, I guess I was feeling how it hurt you, little boy. That’s what made the tears come. I don’t like anything to hurt my brave boy.”

He remembered puzzling over that, and the asking, “Is I your bwave boy, Muvver?”

She had looked at the lingering tears on his cheeks, and then smiled a bit sadly. “Well, perhaps not just yet, dear. But you’re going to be brave by and by. Brave people don’t cry for hurts, you know. They bear a hurt quietly, with beautiful courage. When you grow up you will grow courageous I hope.”

He could remember every word she had said about being brave. Dear Mother! He remembered her tender smile. Somehow it almost comforted him for her absence now. It was the greatest hurt he had, that she was gone. Was he being brave about it? And would she think, was she thinking now, where she was in heaven; was she feeling satisfied that he had been brave in the war he had been fighting? There was a time to which he could look back, when his very soul had been torn with pain, and he had remembered her words then, of how a real man would be brave, even when suffering great pain.

Over on the other side of the room lay his uniform; a purple heart and a silver star adorned its somberness, but what were they to him now? Would his mother think he had won the silver star? Would she have been pleased? Oh, yes, she would! But he must not think about that now. He had come home and she was not here. He had a new life to live, though he had little heart for it, now, when it suddenly dawned upon him that he was here. Here in the old house, where he had so longed to be! Here with the old apple trees around him in full bloom, and the birds singing their tumultuous songs, just as if there had been no war. Just as if there were not death, and no more war going on even now, where some of his former comrades were going bravely into battle. Birds singing. Almost as if it might be heaven and he was hovering on the edge of it, as if there were no sorrow, and only peace and joy. Glad birds! How could they? How could they sing when there was still sorrow in the world?

But this couldn’t last forever, this wrenching of hearts, and pain in the midst of joy. Someday there would dawn glory, and joy forever, and he must live for that time. It sounded almost like a sermon he was preaching to himself these first dawning thoughts of homecoming.

But there were sweet things to think about, too. Perhaps they were some of the themes of the songs those little birds were singing out there among the apple blossoms.

And there had been old Roxy, coming to the door to let him in, her old arms around him, a tenderness in their touch that reminded him of his mother’s touch. She had been his nurse and comforter long ago while his mother was still there. Now she would go on comforting him, just with a gentle hand, the kindliness in her voice, the look in her old eyes, the good things with which she would feed him.

Even last night she had brought him hot broth, and fed him as if he had been that little child she had loved from his babyhood. He had been so tired, and so nearly overcome with exhaustion from his long walk after weeks in the hospital, that he had scarcely thanked her. It had been good to him to be fed. Then she had called old Joel, and together they had got him upstairs to his old room, with the sweet-smelling sheets fresh from their hiding among lavender blossoms, the cool pillows under his head with their breath of lavender. How homelike it had all been, as if his mother had ordered it for him, as if she had arranged it and left it ready when she had to go off to heaven!

So he lay and came slowly back to waking again on a new day. A day where he must be brave. Even though he bitterly missed the past, he must be brave.

He must stop this kind of reminiscing. It was glooming the first morning of his day at home. He must not let that be. What was it he had anticipated so keenly, beyond the mere getting here and feeling the old home around him? He had known his mother was gone, and yet he had wanted to come. What else was there in the life he had left behind those two long years ago?

Friends? Yes, there were a lot of friends of course. But the fellows were all off in the service somewhere. Two who had been very close, he had left lying on the battlefield that last night he was in action and was carried off himself, waking up in a hospital a long time afterward. Girls? Yes, there had been girls, a lot of attractive ones, but he hadn’t wanted to marry any one of them. He had been very young when he went away to college. He hadn’t begun to think about marrying yet. Some of them had been rather sweet. One he had heard was married now, and another had died in an accident. But there had been others. Where were they now? Probably off doing war nursing, or working in some war plant, though he didn’t know of such a place in this vicinity. There might be, of course. He would have to look up some of those old contacts. They would have changed some with the years, probably, and world happenings. He must have changed, too. But it would be pleasant to get together with someone he used to know and talk over old times, find out what had become of this one and that one of whom he had lost track.

There had been Hank Bristow and Casper Withrow. They were probably in the war somewhere. Maybe someone knew. He must get Roxy to talking. She would have heard. Roxy never used to miss a trick in the old days, and she loved to talk when she was in the mood.

There had been Hortense Revenal. What had become of her? She and her mother had come to board over at the next farm a couple of summers before the war. She had been in high school with him, and much in evidence at all the school parties and activities. And because of their living in the same neighborhood it had often fallen to his lot to see her home from gatherings. As she grew older she developed a possessiveness that had not pleased his mother. What was it about her that Mother had criticized? She said she was bold and was much too sophisticated for her age. This was after Hortense had returned from a summer with her father, who was estranged from his wife, and lived in New York. It was rumored there would be a divorce. Hortense’s mother was a giddy person who paid very little attention to her child, and had many weekend visitors from a distance. His own mother used always to have a troubled look in her eyes whenever Hortense had been much in his company.

But it had been no wonder that Hortense was often coming over to see him on one pretense or another, a problem she could not solve, or a Latin sentence she could not translate, and then would stay for a few games. Poor kid! She had nothing at home to attract her. He had felt sorry for her. And Mother had been very kind to her of course. She would always bring her sewing and sit in the room, sometimes playing games with them, taking part in their talk, occasionally reading aloud to them. But he had a strong feeling that his mother had been much relieved when Hortense went to visit her father, or went away to see her grandmother or one of her aunts. His mother definitely had objected to Hortense. Well now, why? That was a question he would have to take out and examine and sift, in case Hortense should turn up again. Just why hadn’t Mother felt easy in having her come over so often? It couldn’t be just that Mother was old-fashioned and didn’t like the way Hortense was dressed, too elaborately, or something of that sort.

Hortense had large appealing black eyes, a dominating personality, and a way of ignoring questions of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, mine and thine. He could look back and see that now. Was it just because his mother had called his attention to it, or had he known it all the time and had he excused it because Hortense had a sort of personal fascination for him?

Well, she had been only a kid then, and he hadn’t been much more himself. If Mother were here now she might not have the same objection, and of course his mother wouldn’t want him to be biased by her judgments of several years ago. Still, he was not deeply anxious to see Hortense. If she came in his way, well and good. If not, well, that was that. It was only childhood stuff, anyway. Of course if he found she was still living in the old place he would have to go and visit, after a while, when he got strong enough to feel like visiting. Then he could judge if he wanted to see her anymore. He could ask Roxy about her. But of course Roxy had never liked her, either.

And there had been Lucy Anne Salter, and the Wrexall twins, Madge and Martha, and Janet Harper. But hadn’t he heard that Janet had gone overseas, in some capacity, a WAC or a WAVE or one of those things? He wasn’t sure. Somehow in those two terrible years of his absence the things he had left behind had grown so unimportant. Well, perhaps it wouldn’t have been that way if his mother had lived and kept on writing her wonderful letters to him. How he used to envy the other fellows after she was gone when they got a letter from their mothers! Well, there! He must stop that. That kind of a memory would bring smarting tears to his eyes, and a soldier did not wear tears. Even if he had been in bed for weeks and weeks, and was all unnerved. He must brace up. Listen to those birds. They were screaming their joy of the morning, and he must be glad, too, for he was at home, where he had wanted for so long to be. He was here, and the morning sounded good, and the breath of apple blossoms was borne on the soft April air. “The time of the singing of birds” had come. He had liked that verse when he was a kid.

But home without Mother wasn’t all he had hoped it would be. Out there in a foreign land in a hospital, home had seemed just heaven, even with his mother gone. Her presence would sort of be lingering around. And it was. Yes, he could remember when she would come into the room in the morning and pull his shades down, to let him sleep a little longer. But there! He mustn’t remember. It would get him all stirred up.

It was early yet, and he was still weary. He would just turn over and go to sleep again.

So the birds sang on and lulled him into a dream of his mother, who seemed to come and soothe his forehead, and tell him to lie still and rest yet a little while, as she used to do. And so he slept again.

Chapter 2

The journey home had been precarious and wearisome. There were so many changes, and he scarcely got over the excitement of one stage of it until another was thrust upon him. Change of scene, conditions, environment, and companions.

From the first suggestion of it, the doctor and the nurses had been opposed to letting him go. They felt it was too soon to move him. He had so recently been considered one who would not recover from that last terrible engagement.

“It’s all wrong,” said the doctor. “Lieutenant Vance should not be moved for at least another month. If they insist upon it I will not answer for the consequences. He is too valuable a man to be taking any chances with his life.”

“Yes, I agree with you,” said Barney Vance’s captain. “He is too valuable a man.”

But when they asked Barney himself they found him strangely indifferent—just that pleasant grin and a quiet lifting of his eyebrows.

“It’s all right with me, Doc,” he said. “It feels good to rest for a while.”

The eyes of the doctor and the captain met with that negative glance that was decisive.

“He doesn’t seem to care,” said the puzzled captain, back in the shack when he called his headquarters. “I thought he’d be all on fire to get home.”

A waiting private looked up, saluted respectfully, and said, “Beg pardon, sir, but perhaps you don’t know that guy has just recently received word from home that his mother’s dead. He wouldn’t be so keen about anything just now. He banked a lot on his mother.”

“Oh,” said the captain, “I didn’t know! How unfortunate he should have got the message yet. He is in not sate of health to bear any more shocks. They should have taken care how they gave him letters.”

“Oh, he’s taking it all right! He’s that kind of a guy!”

“Yes, I know,” said the captain, “he would. A fellow who could do what he’s just got done doing to the enemy, and manage to get back alive, and live, wouldn’t fall down on any of the other attacks of life. He’s real, that man!”

The young private’s eyes were filled with agreement.

“He sure is!” he answered, lifting a look like the raising of a banner.

But definitely, the idea of sending Barry Vance home on furlough was postponed.

Then suddenly an order came through to evacuate the position, abandon the hospital and equipment, except such as could be gathered in haste, and depart. Warning had come that the enemy was on the way.

By night, in a shaky old ambulance they hastily bundled Barney Vance over rough roads, or no roads at all. They jolted frightfully, bringing all the pain of the past weeks back into the weakened body that had been bearing so much—bumping into looming trees in the pathway, not even stars to light them. There was distant booming of enemy fire, frightening rumors brought by stealthy scouts, whispered orders, hurrying feet, muted motors, and then an open sky. Careful, anxious hands carried the patients hurriedly across a stubbly field, and deposited them in haste in an airplane. A jerk, a roar, a dash, and they were soaring up, somehow like the eventualities of battle that had been so much a part of his life and thoughts for the past months, that he was plunged backward and roused to a tense alertness, wondering if he was responsible again to help quell what was going on. Then the whir of wings overhead, around, everywhere! Was the enemy pursuing? He looked up with a strange apathy, as he felt that they were mounting. Would they escape? Or was this the end, in a decrepit airplane, unable to escape? Shot down at the last, ignominiously, after two years of noble fighting! At least they all called the work he had done noble. But there didn’t seem much nobility to an end like this. Crippled, weak, sick, and no chance for escape!

Still they were mounting. Were they going up to God now? Well, the enemy wouldn’t come that far, at least. Enemies would have to stop before they reached God’s throne. That was one refuge they would not dare to face.

He drew a wary relaxed breath as he felt their altitude. Clouds around, below! He raised up on one elbow to get a glimpse out the window. There didn’t seem to be an enemy in sight. Had they lost them? But there was still the sound of bombs far below. Would the clouds keep their secret, or part and give the enemy another view to follow?

He dropped wearily back on the roughly improvised pillow and closed his eyes. What did it matter? He had to go to sleep. Even in such straits, he had to go to sleep.

When he awoke it was night, and they were coming down silently in the darkness. There was some trouble about refueling, but it didn’t have to concern him, though he was comfortably relieved when he felt the lift of wings again. They were going high now, but he did not look out to see if they were followed. He did not care. Perhaps they were really going to God, and that was all right with him if they did. He knew God. He had got acquainted with Him out there on the battlefield in all that stress. Of course his mother had tried to teach him from the time he was a mere babe, but it hadn’t somehow meant anything to him until he got out there facing danger. Danger and a battlefield. That was a great place to have God, the great God, come walking toward you with welcome on His face. A hand held out to help and lift. No, he wasn’t afraid of God.

When he woke again he was being carried on a stretcher to a dim building where there was a hospital of sorts. But it didn’t matter. He was glad of any anchorage for the time.

There followed an indeterminate period of dullness. Waiting for orders. Waiting for transportation. And then more journeying. A ship at last. But it was all hazy. He hadn’t even then quite roused to the consciousness of the moment enough to ask just where in the great world he was, or perhaps no one talked about those things. He hadn’t entirely come out of the stress of war far enough to care much. There were only two places that mattered anymore. Where he was, and home. And perhaps home was only a great wistfulness now, since he had had the word that his mother was gone. It was all just a great weariness, and wanting to get where he might have the say of what he should do and when he should eat and sleep. Rest was a great need.

Then the rough truck journey to the ship, his first attempts to walk around by himself, without much desire to do so. Was it always going to be like this? This great aversion of his body to take the initiative in any movement? Would this continue? Was he half dead already? He wasn’t afraid of death outright, but this deadness of senses, this apathy of mind, this terrible weakness, it was intolerable. Sinking into a deck chair and closing his eyes brought momentary relief. Gradually the quiet of the sea, the invigorating salt air, cleared his brain. Hours came when he could walk with almost a spring in his step, when he could look off over the blue of the sea. Such peace of blue with sunlight on its billows. So wide, so quiet, so far from tumult and war! He was sailing, sailing! It was better than sailing up among the clouds. It was quieter. It rested him. This might go on forever.

In the night the scene of peace changed. An ominous sound. Was it wind? Or wings? Motors? Hurrying footsteps, voices, shouts, sudden lights, startling words hurled hissingly through long whispers. And again the old tumult back, a pounding heart, presaging disaster. The enemy again? He must get up and fight for victory. He could not lie here and rest when the enemy was rampant again.

Explosions! Yes, that must be a submarine! He sprang from his berth to investigate. A sudden long shudder through the ship. More explosions! He shook the sleep from his eyes and tried to think. He was back on the alert again now, dropping into the old training, thinking quickly, working fast, back among the crew taking a hand, his weakness forgotten, his mind racing ahead. Long hours of activity, anxiety, readiness for what might come, no time to think of where he was going, nor how it was going to be when he got there. No time to rest, or even to sleep or eat. No one with time enough to prepare meals. Putting out fires, saving their ship. There was plenty to be done, and not even a doctor with time enough to notice whether he was fit for the work he was doing.

He told himself that perhaps it was as well, that is, when he had a split second to think about it. He had been getting lazy. That apathy was gone. It took an enemy, and threat of disaster, to bring him back to normal again. Oh, perhaps there might be a reaction afterward, and the apathy return. What he was doing now might delay his final recovery. Oh well, what did it matter? This was the job at hand and it must be done. Something that future generations might need for their well-being. This was what he was set to do. His business in life was to help win the war, not to humor his physical needs.

So, the hours went by, and the ship was saved, the submarine vanquished. The anxiety lessened and a great impatience followed, a gradual lethargy stealing on again, as native skies drew nearer. Strange ships dimly on the horizon, airplanes at night! Would they never reach the land, the place of peace?

He had thought when he left his home that he would not return until every enemy was vanquished, yet here he was, almost at home, and the war not won yet! A rising shame engulfed him. What had he not done that he might have done to save his world? He had wrought his best, and here he was almost back among a people that had expected so much of him and his companions, and now they had had to send him home, without them. It was ridiculous. He went over there to die, didn’t he? Why didn’t they let him stay and die then? He could have sent a few more deadly shots, couldn’t he, before he was done? What did it matter if he died doing it, after he had done his best? Why hold him to recover? Just his few last shots might have helped the deciding battle.

Those were his last thoughts before he dropped out of consciousness.

The birds sang on. And off in the distance there came the sound of cooing dove, bringing dimly to mind the rest of that verse. “The time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle [dove] is heard in our land.”

Chapter 3

Three boys were wheeling by the old Vance house on bicycles that rattled and clattered, and showed their age nonchalantly. They looked toward the old house with something of a possessiveness in their eyes.

“What’s become of the guy that usedta live here?” asked Jimmy Holzer. “He get killed or somepin’?”

“Naw,” said Billy Lang, “I heard it was worse’n that. I guess he got took prisoner.”

“Naw! You’re wrong!” said Boog Tiller importantly. “He got took by the enemy, all righty, after he’d brought down seventeen of those mosquito things, or mebbe it was twenty-six, I forget which. An’ then they got him, and took him to ’n ’nterment camp, I guess it was, but he escaped, see? And he had all kinds of a time gettin’ back to his outfit, an’ mos’ died on the way, only some pal of his found him and carried him back to his own company, an’ he’s been in the hospital an awful long time. He was hurt bad, ya know. But they say now he’s gonta get well after all, an’ he’s gonta be sent home for rest, sometime, mebbe soon.”

“You mean he’s gonta come back here to Vance’s Point? You mean we can see him again sometime, Boog?”

“Could be,” said Boog, speculatively.

“Oh, gee! Wouldn’t that be great? Mebbe they’ll have a celebration with a procession an’ eats an’ things, an’ we can be there!”

“Could be,” said Boog again, contemplating the possibility of giving out such information as a fact, and whether it might have any bad reactions for the giver of such news, provided it didn’t turn out to be exactly true. However, one could always qualify it by prefacing such information by the words “I heard—”

But the subject of all this speculation was sweetly sleeping behind the apple blossom screen, and didn’t hear. Even though the voices of the boys were by no means hushed, but rang out clearly as if they wanted to make an audience hear. So they wheeled on around the bend of the road and could be heard no more.

Two old men and their hired helper, sitting in the back of a truck steadying a plow, were the next to pass by.

“I see that young Vance has been doing great things over there across the water,” said Ezekiel Summers, as he drove down the road gripping the wheel of his car with his gnarled old hands, and nodding toward the old house. “Pity his ma ain’t alive to know about it. They tell me where they read in the papers how he got a star and a purple something for honorable bravery—ain’t that what they call it? Yes, it certainly is a pity his ma can’t know about it. It would have done her heart good. She certainly did think a heap of that boy o’ hers, an’ rightly, too. She done a good job, bringing him up, all alone as it were, without any dad to help. He ain’t no sissy, neither, even if he has got a college education, an’ wasted a lotta time playin’ ball, an’ got his picture in the papers. But I guess we can rightly be proud of him in our town in spite of all that, after all them enemy planes he done for.”

“Yeah,” said the tough young plowman, Sam Gillers, “but they do say he’s been wounded bad. Some say he may not get well. He might not even come home at all. There’s thousands of them boys just die, and their folks don’t know for a long time.”

“Aw, yes, their folks get notices,” said Ike Peterson. “The gov’nment’s been real nice about sendin’ their folks word about what’s happened to ’em, afore they tell it to the papers, Zeke!”

“Well, yes, I guess they have been kinda careful about such things,” said Zeke. “But you know it ain’t so easy to attend to all such little trifles when you’ve got a whole army to look out for. Besides, they don’t waste many words tellin’ their folks. There was the Barrowses only just got word their Joe was missin’ in action, an’ got took pris’ner an’ they haven’t had one word since, an’ that was two years, lackin’ a month, ago, an’ Miz Barrows she’s pretty near went crazy about that boy of hers. They oughtn’t to wait that long, I don’t think.”

“Well, in this case,” spoke up the young plowman, “there ain’t nobody to let know, since Miz Vance passed on. There ain’t none of his folks left around here.”

“Well, I guess Roxy an’ Joel think a lot o’ that Barney fella. Roxy’s took care o’ him since he was a babe in arms,” said Summers.

“Yes, I guess she has,” said Peterson.

Their echoing voices clanged among the apple blooms and seemed to hit the very clapboards of the old house as they passed, but they did not reach the sleeper whose dreams were sweet and deep.

A little later, when the morning sun was mounting higher, a stylish car drove by with two dashing girls talking hilariously above their motor’s noise.

“Oh boy! I wish this war would end!” yawned one daintily. “I’m fed up with all the things we do these days, and all the things we can’t do. It’s too ridiculous, telling us we can’t have things we like to eat, and not giving us all the gas we want. Why, I’ve heard there’s plenty of gas, stored up somewhere. What right have they got to tell us we can’t take pleasure rides, I’d like to know? Look at all their spending, sending tanks around the world. That must cost a lot! I don’t really think I believe in war, anyway,” said Irma Watts. “They act like they were playing a game trying to see which could kill the most. For my part, I don’t see why the good people have to go out and endanger their lives just because some crazy people across the ocean want to fight. Look at Mary Forbes having to go to work, and let her young husband go off for no telling how long, and maybe never come back. And Janet Waters with three babies to take care of. And her husband has to get called. He goes next Monday. I don’t think it’s fair, do you, Hortense? I don’t see why somebody doesn’t do something about it. I think it’s time for this war to be over, don’t you?”

“Yes,” yawned Hortense, “I think it’s an awful bore!”

“Say, Hortense, isn’t this the old Vance house? Didn’t you used to have a crush on the handsome boy they called Barney? Seems to me they told me that when I got back from visiting my grandmother. What became of him?”

“Oh, he’s gone to war of course, like everybody else,” said Hortense. “There’s hardly any men left in town worth speaking about. But they say some of them are coming back on furloughs pretty soon. I shouldn’t wonder if Barney Vance would be coming home. Nobody seems to know. Yes, I used to go with him a lot. We were practically engaged before he went to war, but of course he was pretty much under his mother’s thumb, and she had a terrible religious complex. She didn’t want him to do this and that, and he had to go with her to church. Even after he grew up she hung on to him, and she and I never would have hit it off. But now, she’s out of the way, I might be interested in him again. We’ll see! He was a nice kid, and awfully handsome of course.”

“He’s maybe changed a lot himself,” said Irma.

“Well, yes, probably. He wouldn’t have stood for lipstick and blush, not in the old days. But he’s likely come in touch with a little European sophistication, and learned how girls ought to look. Anyhow, why should I care?” And Hortense tossed her dark curls back from her forehead and tilted her ridiculous little trifle of a hat down over one eye with anticipatory assurance, while her laugh rang out noisily and startled a wood robin that was practicing a love song on a tree by Barney’s window. Perhaps it was the cessation of that love song that made Barney wake up, and then the next sound that he heard was the shuffling of Roxy’s old felt slippers as she scuffled along the hall that led to his room. The footsteps paused, and there came the subdued tinkle of glass against silver. Roxy was bringing his breakfast, the way she used to bring it when he was a kid and had been sick for a few days, measles or mumps or something. He half smiled and opened his eyes. Softly he heard the doorknob turn, and Roxy’s gray head and the gleam of her steel-rimmed spectacles appeared cautiously.

“Hello, Roxy!” he called with his old grin. “Top of the morning to you! What are you tiptoeing in so carefully for? I don’t have to go to school this morning, do I?”

Roxy almost cried at the familiar greeting, and her sweet old lips parted in her well-remembered merry smile.

“Bless you, dear boy!” she said. “No, you don’t have to go to school anymore. Leastways, not to the old village school. Perhaps you’ll find a few more lessons in the school of life for you to learn yet, but this morning you’re home, and you have the whole day before you. Ready for breakfast, are you?”

“You betcher life, Roxy. Real home-cooked breakfast! That’s something I haven’t had for two long years. Whatcha go, Roxy? Is that bacon I smell? And eggs? Pancakes? Oh boy! Honey? From our bees? Say, Roxy! That’s swell! I was afraid honey might be rationed, or perhaps the bees had gone to war.”

Roxy laughed happily. “No, the bees ain’t gone yet. They’re using mosquitoes instead in the war, I heard. I read something about that in the papers.”

“Say, Roxy, you still have your fine old sense of humor, haven’t you? That’s good. You said you were getting old, Roxy, but you’re mistaken. You couldn’t twinkle like that if you were old.”

“Oh, go ’way with you, child!” said Roxy happily.

“Say, this is a swell breakfast, Roxy, and I see you’ve started in to spoil me just the way you always did. Didn’t you know I’ve graduated from having my breakfast in bed? They wouldn’t have let me come home if I hadn’t. You can’t baby a big soldier like that, Roxy. The government will get after you if you do.”

Roxy dropped into a straight chair with her arm over the back and sat there beaming on her adored nursling as he ate his breakfast and joked with her, until she was convinced that he had not lost any of his old spirit by going to war, grim as it must have been. And when he had eaten the last crumb she rose to take the tray.

“Want some more of anything?” she asked anxiously.

“Not on your life, Roxy,” he said with a grin. “You know it doesn’t do to feed a starving person too much at the first meal, and I’m sure I’ve already eaten twice as much as I should have eaten for the first meal at home. Now, Roxy, sit down again and tell me all about everybody. Where are all the fellows and the girls I used to run around with? Are any of them here yet?”

Roxy sighed. “Well, no, only a couple of them. Cy Baxter is still in the bank. You know he has flat feet, and he’s tried several things and they won’t take him. Of course his mother’s glad, but she keeps it to herself, though you can’t blame her. She’s almost blind, and he’s all she’s got.”

“No, I suppose war is hard for mothers. It must have been hard for mine, although she urged me to go, said she was glad I wanted to. She always taught me to be loyal to my country, and brave to do the right thing, even if it meant fighting and dying, for a principle.”

“Yes, that she would, lad. Your mother was a brave lady to the end, and I thank the Lord she didn’t have to suffer too long. She was always so quiet and so brave. And she was that pleased when the piece came out in the paper saying how brave her boy was. She held the paper in her hand all that first day. She wouldn’t let it go out of her sight, and she read it over till she knew it by heart. And then she’d say, ‘Roxy, I knew he’d be like that. I knew he’d be brave, because his father was. I used to tell him about his father in the last war, and I knew he’d be like that! I’m glad I lived long enough to know that; though if I hadn’t, doubtless my Lord would have told me about it after I get Home.’ ”

There were tears dropping down the boy’s face before she was done.

“Oh, Roxy, I’m glad you told me that!” he said. “I’m glad she lived to know about the nice things they said. But oh, if she could have lived a little longer till I got home!”

“Yes, I know, laddie!” soothed the old woman, coming over beside the bed.

The young man had buried his face in the pillow, and his shoulders were shaking with dry soundless sobs. Only the back of his head was visible, and one arm, with his hand gripping the blankets. Then old Roxy bent over and patted the thick dark hair that curled over his handsome head.

“But she said for you not to grieve, you know, laddie,” continued the sweet old voice. “She said for you to live out your life and be happy till it was time for you to come Home, and she’d be waiting there to welcome you.”

The shaking shoulders were suddenly still, and presently the soldier turned over and brushed the tears away, with a semblance of his old grin.

“Yes, I know,” he said. “Now, let’s go on from here. We’ll talk about mother again, sometime, but now, tell me about the rest of the boys. What became of the Nezbit twins, Dave and Donnie? And where did they finally get away to? And where is Will Glegg?”

“Well, let me see. Dave an’ Donnie, why, they’re over in Iceland, and homesick as they can be for a sight of home. Donnie wrote back last fall some other fella got an autumn leaf in a letter from a girl, an’ it made them all envious, wantin’ to get back. An’ Willy Glegg, he’s somewhere in Africa. They certainly do think up the most faraway places to send our boys to; seems if they might have gone where they wouldn’t have to learn a new language.”

The forlorn soldier began to laugh, and Roxy was pleased, and rattled on.

“Then there was Gene Tolland, he got himself a nice fat office job with plenty of gold stripes he hadn’t earned fighting. Came back here and strutted around like he owned the earth. And Phelps Larue was missing in action. He would be, you know. He was always everywhere when he was needed, and he had plenty of honors to his credit. And Taffy Rolland is out somewhere undersea in a submarine. That don’t seem right, either; nice quiet boy like Taffy, never did anybody any harm, and hasta go off undersea? How could he ever expect to do anything for the war undersea? And Bill Brower, he got killed at Guadalcanal they say, and that’s about all the boys.”

“And the girls?” asked the soldier. “Are they doing anything?”

“I should say they are,” said Roxy. “Arta Perry and Franny Forsythe went in training for nurses. They’re off on a big transport somewhere. And Betty Price is a WAC, and the Bowman girls and Lula Fritz are WAVES, or some of the A.B.C.s, I forget what. And the Grady, and Baker, and Watson girls went into a defense plant and are welders. I must say, I’m not sure I like nice girls going around doing men’s work, but I suppose that’s what war is, and we can’t help it. Though in my day it wouldn’t have been considered nice.”

The young man on the bed laughed, and then after a moment he asked, “And whatever became of Hortense? Is she around here anywhere?”

“Oh, she got herself married soon after you left,” announced Roxy triumphantly.

“Married?” There was a shade of surprise in the voice of the soldier. Then after an instant, “Who did she marry?”

“Oh, she married some rich, good-looking lieutenant, and then when he got himself sent away off somewhere she tried to insist he refuse to go, and when he wouldn’t do as she wanted she got herself divorced. Oh, she had some other trumped-up excuse, but when it came to alimony they found he wasn’t so rich after all, and she sort of lost out! And now I understand she’s trotting around to camps and the places they call ‘centers,’ entertaining soldiers. Though it never struck me she was very entertaining. Kind of coarse and loud I thought she was.”

“You never liked Hortense, did you, Roxy?”

“Oh, I wasn’t so keen on her of course, but I did own she used to be pretty after a fashion. But she’s changed a lot. She’s all painted up fit to kill; got a mouth as big as a hollyhock, all greasy red stuff. I don’t know why they paint ’em so thick, if they must paint ’em. But anyhow she’s a sight. However, she’s got plenty of fellas to run after her where she is now, though I don’t know what good it’ll do her, when they’re all going overseas all the time.”