bserved.

"Oh, I've cleared away the ruins," she said. "I hate reminders of a
mess."

It was like her exquisiteness to do that and it tightened his throat to
think about it. He'd have liked to make sure what the cause of the
explosion had been, but thought he'd better wait a while for that. All he
ventured in the way of sympathetic approbation was to reach out and pat
the ridge that extended down the middle of the bed. "It certainly has
been one devil of an evening," he said.

"I suppose it has," she agreed, thoughtfully. Then, noticing that this
had rather thrown him off his stride, she went on, "Tell me all that's
been happening since I ran away. How did Paula act when it was over?"

"I haven't seen her," he said. "She never came down at all. Of course it
must have been--well, in a way, a devil of an evening for her, too.
Though I can't believe our being there cramped her style very much in
singing those songs. If it did, I'd hate to think what she would have
done if we hadn't been. I hope March liked his own stuff. He was there
all the while, you know. She must have had him tucked away in that little
old room of Annie's that opened off the nursery. Somewhere anyhow,
because long after every one else had gone, he came down-stairs with the
Frenchman. I got one surprise just then all right. He's a private
soldier, did you know that? Just a plain doughboy."

"Overseas?" Mary asked.

"As far as Bordeaux, with the Eighty-sixth. Saxaphone player with one of
the artillery bands. In a way I'm rather glad of it. That that's what he
turns out to be, I mean."

"Why?" Mary made the word rather crisply.

"Oh, well," Rush explained uncomfortably, "you know what it had begun to
look like. Paula quarreling with father about him and not going down to
dinner; and--cutting loose like that over his music. But of course there
couldn't be anything of that sort--with a chap like that."

"What is the lowest military rank," Mary inquired, "that you think Paula
could fall in love with?"

The satirical import of her question was not lost upon him but he held
his ground. "It may sound snobbish but it's true just the same," he
insisted. "A doughboy's a doughboy, and Paula wouldn't get mixed up with
one--any more than you would."

There was a silence after that.

"His music didn't sound to me like doughboy music," Mary observed at
last. "Nor his going to Walt Whitman to get the words."

"Was that Walt Whitman? It sounded to me as i