rom for four years; and about
the thousands of girls who have given their youth and prettiness to
making munitions. I think about things like that and then I say to
myself, 'My goodness, what is a little sugar, more or less!' Why,
Elliott, we don't begin to feel the war over here, not as they feel
it!"

Elliott, who considered that she felt the war a good deal, demurred.
"I have lost my home," she said, feeling a little ashamed of the words
as she said them.

"But it is there," objected Laura. "Your home is all ready to go back
to, isn't it? That's my point."

"And there's Father," said Elliott.

"I know, and my brothers. But I don't feel that _I_ have done anything
in their being in the army. It is doing them lots of good: every
letter shows that. And, anyway, I'd be ashamed if they didn't go."

"Something might happen," said Elliott. "What would you say then?"

"The same, I hope. But what I mean is, the war doesn't really touch us
in the routine of our every-day living. _We_ don't have to darken our
windows at night and take, every now and then, to the cellars. The
machinery of our lives isn't thrown out of gear. We don't live hand in
hand with danger. But lots of us think we're killed if we have to use
our brains a little, if we're asked to substitute for wheat flour, and
can't have thick frosting on our cake and eat meat three times a day.
Oh, I've heard 'em talk! Why, our life over here isn't really
topsyturvy a bit!"

"Isn't it?" There were things, Elliott thought, that Laura, wise as
she was, didn't know.

"We're inconvenienced," said Laura, "but not hurt."

Elliott was silent. She was trying to decide whether or not she was
hurt. Inconvenienced seemed rather a slim verb for what had happened
to her. But she didn't go on to say what she had meant to say about
candy, and she felt in her secret soul the least bit irritated at
Laura.

Then Priscilla whirled in on her tiptoes, her hands behind her back.
"The postman went right straight by, though I hung out the window and
called and called. I guess he didn't hear me, he's awful deaf
sometimes."

"Didn't I get a letter?" Elliott's face fell.

"Mail is slow getting through, these days," said Aunt Jessica, coming
in from the main kitchen. "We always allow an extra day or two on the
road. Wasn't there anything at all from Bob or Sidney or Pete, Pris?
You little witch, you certainly are hiding something behind your
back."

Then Priscilla gave a gay litt