sport. A blithe summer month had plunged
them into the most terrible war of the scarred old earth. The
battlefields where they had mustered, stunned, but tingling with vigor
and eagerness, were becoming the vast cemeteries of their generation.
The field where lay the young dead was their place in the sun. The still
hospital where lay the maimed was their part in a civilization whose
sincerity they had trusted as little children trust in the perfection of
their parents.

Beside the army of maimed and fallen boys was another shadowy army of
girls in their teens and sweet early twenties--the unclaimed
contemporaries of a buried generation.

There was a fumbling at the door-handle and a small, muffled voice came
from the corridor:--

"I say, Len; I say, Marjorie, can I come in?" And in he walked, spotless
and engaging, in a white sailor suit with baggy long trousers, his hair
still wet from being tortured into corkscrew curls. "I'm all dressed for
the party," he announced; "I'm not going to bed at all to-night."

Marjorie tried to draw him into her lap, but he eluded her with a
resentful wiggle, and walking up to Leonard, whacked him on the thigh
and looked up with a sly, beseeching glance which said, "Whack me back.
You play with me. You notice me. I love you."

His eyes were on a level with Leonard's pistol; he put his little pink
face close to it lovingly, but drew back again, puckering up his small
nose.

"Oh, Leonard, you smell just like a poor man!" he exclaimed.

Leonard grinned. "You never got as near as this to any poor man who is
half as dirty as I am, old dear."

"You've got just half an hour to dress for dinner, and we're due in the
church at eight," said Marjorie.

She paused in the doorway, a slim figure in a crumpled white dress.

Leonard stared at her blankly, and then put out a bony arm and drew her
to his side.

"It's awfully tough on you, honey, to have it this way; no new clothes
or anything fixed up, and," he added, smiling and closing his eyes,
"coming away across the ocean full of dirty little submarines to a
bridegroom smelling like a poor man! Jove! I want a bath!"

"Just as I was about to take the liberty of remarking myself," old
Nannie said. She was standing in the doorway, her arms akimbo and her
sleeves rolled up. "Captain Leeds, it's all ready."

Leonard's arms were still about Marjorie. "Captain Leeds, otherwise
known as Lieutenant Leeds," he said, "once known as Leonard, pres