hree men, T.A. Three fighting men. I've got two service
buttons already," she glanced down at her blouse, "and Charley Fisk said
I had the right to wear one for him. I'll look like a mosaic, but I'm
going to put 'em all on."

* * * * *

The day before Emma's departure for the West Grace arrived, with bags,
bundles, and babies. A wan and tired Grace, but proud, too, and with the
spirit of the times in her eyes.

"Jock!" she repeated, in answer to their questions. "My dears, he
doesn't know I'm alive. I visited him at camp the day before I left. He
thinks he'll be transferred East, as we hoped. Wouldn't that be
glorious! Well, I had all sorts of intimate and vital things to discuss
with him, and he didn't hear what I was saying. He wasn't even
listening. He couldn't wait until I had finished a sentence so that he
could cut in with something about his work. I murmured to him in the
moonlight that there was something I had long meant to tell him and he
answered that dammit he forgot to report that rifle that exploded. And
when I said, 'Dearest, isn't this hotel a _little_ like the place we
spent our honeymoon in--that porch, and all?' he said, 'See this feller
coming, Gracie? The big guy with the moustache. Now mash him, Gracie.
He's my Captain. I'm going to introduce you. He was a senior at college
when I was a fresh.'"

But the peace and the pride in her eyes belied her words.

Emma's trip, already delayed, was begun ten days before her husband's
date for sailing. She bore that, too, with smiling equanimity. "When I
went to school," she said, "I thought I hated the Second Peloponnesian
War worse than any war I'd ever heard of. But I hate this one so that I
want everyone to get into it one hundred per cent., so that it'll be
over sooner; and because we've won."

They said little on their way to the train. She stood on the rear
platform just before the train pulled out. They had tried frantically to
get a lower berth, but unsuccessfully. "Don't look so tragic about it,"
she laughed. "It's like old times. These last three years have been a
dream--a delusion."

He looked up at her, as she stood there in her blue suit, and white
blouse, and trim blue hat and crisp veil. "Gad, Emma, it's uncanny. I
believe you're right. You look exactly as you did when I first saw you,
when you came in off the road after father died and I had just taken
hold of the business."

For answer she hummed a few