one
who was any one at all had a family. Bruce did not look common: his
gray eyes and his broad forehead and his keen, thin face were almost
distinguished, and his manners were above criticism. But one never
could tell. And hadn't he been brought up by Camerons? The very
openness with which he had told his story had something fine about it.
He, like Laura, seemed to see nothing in it to conceal.

Well, was there? Elliott could quite clearly imagine what Aunt
Margaret, Stannard's mother, would say to that question. She had never
especially cared for Aunt Margaret. As Elliott looked at Bruce
Fearing, one of the pillars of her familiar world began to totter.
Actually, she could think of no particularly good reason why, when she
had heard his story, she should proceed to shun him. His history
simply didn't seem to matter, except to make her sorry for him; and
yet she couldn't be really sorry for a boy who had been brought up by
Aunt Jessica.

Perhaps the Cameron Farm atmosphere was already beginning to work.

"I think you and your brother had luck," she said.

"I know we did," answered Bruce.

Elliott turned the conversation. "I wish you could tell me what you
were going to say, when we were interrupted yesterday, about a
person's having no choice except how he will do things--_you_ having
had only that kind of choice."

"I remember," said Bruce. "Well, for one thing, I suppose I could get
grouchy, if I chose, over not knowing who my people were."

"They may have been very splendid," said Elliott.

Bruce smiled. "It's not likely."

"In that case," she countered, "you have the satisfaction of _not_
knowing who they were."

"Exactly. But that's rather a crawl, isn't it? Of course, a fellow
would like to know."

The boy bent forward, and, with painstaking care, selected a blade
from a tuft of grass growing between his feet. He nibbled a minute
before he spoke again.

"See here, I'm going to tell you something I haven't told a soul. I'm
crazy to go to the war. Sometimes it seems as though I couldn't stay
home. When Pete's letters come I have to go away somewhere quick and
chop wood! Anything to get busy for a while."

"Aren't you too young? Would they take you?"

"Take me? You bet they'd take me! I'm eighteen. Don't I look twenty?"

The girl's eye ran critically over the strong young body, with its
long, supple, sinewy lines. "Yes," she nodded. "I think you do."

"They'd take me in a minute, in aviation or