to see that he
did it just right. But a day with Sandy was a treat, for besides being
in another quarter he was an officer, and as hard to get at as the
Kaiser. But they arranged a meeting this Sunday, and Jimmie guessed
that Sandy bust all the red tape in the British army doing it.

"Neil and I had just come out of our ground-hog's hole and we had
nearly all France on our uniforms, and Sandy was such a swell, all
dolled up like a field-marshal that Neil said perhaps we oughtn't to be
so familiar as to salute him. But we got a bath and got fumigated too,
and it was real Christmas holidays not to have to scratch for a whole
day. We had to salute Sandy when there was any one else round, but
when we got him alone I paid him up for all the respect and I wiped the
floor with a few yards of his officer's uniform. I tell you,
Christina, he can't put me down now the way he used to. I'm as hard as
nails and I'm as tall as he is. Sandy said I could be court-martialed
and shot for it, but Neil refereed and saw that justice was done. I
started out to tell you and Mother about that Sunday we had together,
but I'll leave it to Neil, he can do it better than I can, but I want
Mother to know that I agree with everything he says, and she needn't be
scared about me out here. I'm all right."

"So don't cry, Dear, I'm all right here.
Oh, it's just like bein' at hame."

Sandy's letter told still more about the meeting; but Neil's letter
went right to the heart of the matter. "I wish you could have seen us
at our Battalion service, Mother, that Sunday morning. It wasn't very
far back, and we could hear the guns booming as we stood in a quiet
spot behind a shattered little village. We sang 'Faint not for fear,
His arms are near,' the last hymn we sang in Orchard Glen church, and
after it was over we met Sandy and we went off together, Sandy and
Jimmie and I, to have one of our old-time Sunday talks, just as we used
to wander off to the fields after Sunday School, we two, with Jimmie
tagging at our heels. It wasn't much like home, though, just a
desolate shell-torn corner behind the ragged remnants of a barn, but,
somehow, the quiet took us back to Orchard Glen and home, and you
seemed there. And we got talking about the contrast between our life
out here and back there and the temptations all around that were so
new. And we each stood up, so to speak, and told our experience, like
a good old Methodist class-meeting, tha