with his eyes the packages being carried toward the kitchen. “Gee, it’s great to be hungry again.”

Christmas dinner was more of a success than anyone had hoped for. The convalescents could not help responding to such kind efforts, and in doing so they forgot their homesickness and began to appreciate their real good-fortune. Then, returning strength gave a good share of them hearty appetites, which found a reasonable number of German or American good things for their satisfaction. And the bright flags, the soft green of the fir branches, and the red berries which Lucy and Michelle had searched for in the forest, made the dining-room and tables gay and almost homelike to the young Americans gathered there. Some were still in wheeled chairs, with hollow cheeks and no interest in the food before them, but even these cheered up a little as talk and laughter grew louder, as songs of home were sung and toasts offered with cheers or laughter.

Larry Eaton was there, at Lucy’s invitation, and he, Madame de la Tour, Armand, Michelle and Lucy sat together at one end of a table. Larry was in wonderful spirits, or else he tried with all his kind heart to make Lucy forget Bob’s absence. Madame de la Tour, in the midst of the noisy, crowded roomful, said little. Her eyes were upon her son as he smiled and talked and tried to coax his feeble appetite for her pleasure.All at once it seemed to Lucy that the Christmas gayety had more of the pathetic than the merry about it, and that the toasts drunk were bantering and would-be light-hearted ones, because reminders of home brought some of those weak, white-faced convalescents close to tears. After it was all over and the men scattered, some wheeled away to rest after too much excitement, Lucy, Michelle, Armand and Larry walked into the forest, where the sinking sun had begun to send its slanting beams.

“I’d like to come here to get well,” remarked Larry, sniffing the piney air. As he spoke a cold wind, rising with the approach of sunset, swept through the trees and made the girls draw their capes closer. Larry added thoughtfully, “I mean I’d like it here now—the war over and all. It’s not a place to come to as a German prisoner. Rather spooky, if you were inclined to be down on your luck.”

“Do you find it that way too, Larry?” cried Lucy, delighted to hear her own thoughts put into words. “I’ve felt that so often about this forest in the two weeks I’ve been here. Have you ever read silly books where, when the hero feels desperate about anything, a thunder-storm comes up to give him a background? Well, this forest never changes, 

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