m in a manner which would
have been pleasant enough, if he had not, with quick sensitiveness, felt
it to be forced. But perhaps that was English stiffness.

Then she had turned to her husband, who was standing staring into the
fireplace, although, as it was June, there was no fire there to stare
at.

"Charles," she said, "here is Lieutenant Cary"; and her voice had a
certain note in it which at home Cary and his sister Nancy were in the
habit of designating "mother-making-dad-mind-his-manners."

At her words the old man--and Cary was startled to see how old and
broken he was--turned round and held out his hand, "How d'you do?" he
said jerkily, "how d'you do?" and then turned abruptly back again to the
fireplace.

"Hello! What's up! The old boy doesn't like me!" was Cary's quick,
startled comment to himself.

He was so surprised by the look the other bent upon him that he
involuntarily glanced across to a long mirror to see if there was
anything wrong with his uniform. But no, that appeared to be all right.
It was himself, then--or his country; perhaps the old sport didn't fall
for Americans.

"And here is Gerald," Lady Sherwood went on in her low remote voice,
which somehow made the Virginian feel very far away.

It was with genuine pleasure, though with some surprise, that he turned
to greet Gerald Sherwood, Chev's younger brother, who had been,
tradition in the corps said, as gallant and daring a flyer as Chev
himself, until he got his in the face five months ago.

"I'm mighty glad to meet you," he said eagerly, in his pleasant, muffled
Southern voice, grasping the hand the other stretched out, and looking
with deep respect at the scarred face and sightless eyes.

Gerald laughed a little, but it was a pleasant laugh, and his hand-clasp
was friendly.

"That's real American, isn't it?" he said. "I ought to have remembered
and said it first. Sorry."

Skipworth laughed too. "Well," he conceded, "we generally are glad to
meet people in my country, and we don't care who says it first. But," he
added. "I didn't think I'd have the luck to find you here."

He remembered that Chev had regretted that he probably wouldn't see
Gerald, as the latter was at St. Dunstan's, where they were re-educating
the blinded soldiers.

The other hesitated a moment, and then said rather awkwardly, "Oh, I'm
just home for a little while; I only got here this morning, in fact."

Skipworth note the hesitation. Did the old people get