we're wearing ourselves to skin and bone. We call him General. Don't take that about the work seriously, Mother. I never felt better in my life. Tell Lucy there's plenty of time for another box of fudge to get here before we leave. Yes, I noticed what she said about her commission in the Twenty-Eighth. Tell her she can't boss me, though.

"Write me just when to expect you up, and everybody come,—you and Dad and Lucy and William, and Marian whether she wants to or not.

P 47

P 47

"Good-bye and lots of love from

"Bob."

Bob

Lucy read the letter through twice, and then sat thoughtfully motionless with it in her hand, while from the parade came the sound of music as some of the companies drilling late marched back to barracks.

This home-coming of Bob's, so brief and uncertain, to last perhaps twenty-four hours,—a week at most, her father thought,—how different it was from the graduation leave she and Bob had planned together. The one that would have come next summer and given him three long months to spend at home before he joined his regiment. Lucy loved to make plans, and she had looked forward to her brother's graduation leave since his second class furlough a year ago. She had decided that she would be old enough to go nearly everywhere Bob went, by that time, for she would be fifteen the same month that Bob would be twenty-one. And now how far off all those things seemed, and how different from reality. Where would Bob be, anyway, a year from now, if the war still went on?

P 48

P 48

She sat up from among the pillows and folded the letter carefully. Not to borrow trouble is a motto often needed in a soldier's household, and none of the Gordons indulged for long in gloomy ponderings. It was growing dark, too, and Major Gordon was coming up the walk, so dinner would soon be ready.

Lucy did not shake off her thoughtfulness, though, all the evening, even while she discussed the coming trip to West Point cheerfully enough with the rest of the family, and persuaded Marian that she would enjoy herself enough to make up for being tired by the unusual effort. But after she and Marian were in bed she lay long awake, until Taps sounded sweet and clear from the parade and all the house was quiet. Then 

 Prev. P 26/186 next