O.S.

* * * * *

THE BROKEN SOLDIERS.

"Now," I suggested as we left the drapery department, "you've got as much
as you can carry." Unfortunately it was impossible to relieve her of the
parcels as I had all my work cut out to manipulate those confounded
crutches.

"There's only the toy department," returned Pamela, leading the way with
her armful of packages. "I do hope you're not frightfully tired." Of course
it seemed ridiculous, but I had not been out of hospital many days, and as
yet I had not grown used to stumping about in this manner.

"Do you happen," asked Pamela at the counter, "to have such a thing as a
box of broken soldiers?"

The young woman looked astonished and even a little hurt, but offered, with
condescension, to inquire.

"Do you want them for Dick?" I asked, Dick being Pamela's youngest brother.

"For Dick and Alice," said Pamela. Alice was her sister, younger still.

"Why shouldn't I buy them a box of whole ones?"

"That wouldn't answer the purpose. They have three large boxes already,"
answered Pamela, as a young man appeared in a frock coat, with a silver
badge on the right lapel, "For Services Rendered." In his hand was a dusty
cardboard box, and in the box lay five damaged leaden soldiers, up-to-date
soldiers in khaki; two without heads, two armless, one who had lost both
legs.

"Those will do splendidly," said Pamela, and the young man with the silver
badge obligingly put the soldiers into my tunic pocket. It seemed to be
understood that they and I had been knocked out in the same campaign.

"Why," I asked on the way home in the taxi, "did you want the soldiers to
be broken?"

"I--I didn't," murmured Pamela, with a sigh.

"Why did Dick?" I persisted.

"The children are so dreadfully realistic now-a-days. You see, Father
objected to his breaking heads and arms off his new ones. Dick was quite
rebellious. He wanted to know what he was to do for wounded; and Alice was
more disappointed still."

"I should have thought it was too painful a notion for her," I suggested.

"Oh!" cried Pamela, with a laugh, "Alice is a Red Cross nurse, you know.
She's made a hospital out of a Noah's Ark. She only thinks of healing
them."

"All the King's horses and all the King's men cannot put Humpty Dumpty
together again," I said.

"Poor old boy!" whispered Pamela.

"I wonder whether broken soldiers have an interest for you as well," I
remarked ... and Dick