ll the sky was mother-of-pearl and
tender. In the air was the tang of spring. In the white light Marjorie
saw Leonard's lips quiver and he frowned. She had a sudden twinge of
jealousy, swallowed up by an immense tenderness.

"There's mother," he said.

"Hello, Len, old boy."

His father was on the steps. Leonard greeted him with the restraint and
the jocose matter-of-factness that exist between men who love each
other. He kissed his mother a little hungrily, just as he had when he
was a small boy back from his first homesick term at Eton, and fluttered
the heart of that frail, austere lady, who had borne this big, strapping
boy--a feat of which she was sedately but passionately proud.

Little Herbert, all clumsiness and fat legs and arms, did a good deal of
hugging and squealing, and Miss Shake, Leonard's old governess, wept
discreetly and worshipfully in the background.

"Look at 'im! Ain't he grand? Glory be to God--bless 'im, my baby!"
cried Irish Nannie, who had suckled this soldier of England; and loudly
she wept, her pride and her joy unrebuked and unashamed.

At the risk of annoying Leonard, they must follow him about, waiting
upon him at tea-time, touching him wistfully, wonderingly, for was it
not himself, their own Leonard, who had come back to them for a few
days? And instead of himself, it might have been just a name,--Leonard
Leeds,--one among a list of hundreds of others; and written opposite
each name one of the three words, _Wounded, Missing, Dead_.

Jealously his own family drew aside and let Marjorie go upstairs with
him alone. She had the first right; she was his bride. Mr. Leeds plucked
little Herbert back by his sailor collar and put his arm through his
wife's. Together they watched the two slender figures ascending the
broad stair-case. Each parent was thinking, "He's hers now, and they're
young. We mustn't be selfish, they have such a short time to be happy
in, poor dears."

"Looks fit, doesn't he?" said the father, cheerfully, patting his wife's
arm. Inwardly he was thinking, "How fortunate no woman can appreciate
all that boy has been through!"

"Do you think so? I thought he looked terribly thin," she answered,
absently. To herself she was saying, "No one--not even his father--will
ever know what that boy has seen and suffered."

Little Herbert, watching with big eyes, suddenly wriggled his hand from
his father's grasp.

"Wait, Leonard, wait for me! I am coming!"

Upstairs old Na