“I don’t think I’ll ever again complain of food at home,” sighed Lucy as she sank into a chair. She had learned some lessons about the value of a hearty meal during those eight weeks in England. There was enough to eat at Highland House, but it was simple food, limited to each one’s needs.

“This looks wonderful,” she added, carefully spreading the hot, split muffin with a slender share of margarine, for butter was an unknown luxury outside the hospitals.

“That must have been a long letter you had from Bob,” remarked Janet, searching her cousin’s face for signs of unusual worry or homesickness, after her hour’s seclusion. “But perhaps you weren’t reading it much of the time?”

“No, I wasn’t,” said Lucy. “I was thinking about—oh, you know—all sorts of things. But everything Bob wrote was pretty good news. He’s a pilot, as he told me last week, and doing the work he loves to do. He spoke of seeing Arthur very soon, as they’re not far apart.”

“Then he’s near Cantigny,” said Mrs. Leslie quickly, “for that’s where Arthur is now.”

At mention of her eldest son she flushed a little, chiefly with pride, but that feeling was always mixed with fear, and more than ever now, since the opening of the great offensive. Arthur Leslie had served for over three years, had received four wounds, and had been decorated with the Victoria Cross and the Croix de Guerre. In his mother’s anxious thoughts it seemed almost too much to hope that he should be longer spared.

Lucy glanced up at Mrs. Leslie’s face, in that moment when her thoughts were far away from the tea-table and the cheerful room, thinking as she had often done before, how gay and merry Cousin Janet must have been in the happy days before the war. She was cheerful still, in spite of the daily crushing weight upon her, but her lips were close set, and her dark eyes had a sad earnestness behind their glancing brightness. “Two sons and her husband,” Lucy thought. “That’s one more than Mother has to worry for.”

“Come, children,” Mrs. Leslie said, rousing herself after a moment. “Let’s go in and get the gauze cut and arranged for to-morrow’s work. I expect a good many will be here.”

The two girls rose obediently, and as they did so, the ring of the front door-bell sounded through the house.

“Perhaps that’s some one come to help us,” suggested Janet, while her mother, putting behind her the 

 Prev. P 9/191 next