He fretted
over his work; he swore humorously at Fat Joe, who, coming to make
daily reports as soon as Miss Sarah realized that the good in such
visits far exceeded the benefits of sleep and solitude, assured his
chief that they had accomplished much, unhampered as they were by
carping authority.

But he lay and brooded, no humor in his eye, when he was left alone.
Fat Joe had assured him that she had brought him home; but Fat Joe, who
was ever averse to anti-climax, had told him no more than that. His
efforts at entertainment were only the more spontaneous those days
because of the soberness of his friend's face. And then, the same day
that Joe raised him against the pillows so that he might watch a string
of flat-cars, high piled with logs, roll into the yards, they let her
go to him.

Steve was listening to the shrill salute of the whistle which he knew
was McLean's paen of victory; he was smiling a little wistfully over
the memory which, with McLean, always recurred to him, when he turned
and saw her standing on the threshold. She had come on diffident,
mouse-like feet. She was watching him. And before he believed it
really was she, Barbara faltered his name.

"Steve!"

It was only a wisp of a sound--an aching, throbbing bit of tenderness
lighter even than the breath that bore it.

"Steve!" she breathed again.

But thereupon, with a headlong little rush that scattered spools of
bandage and rolls of lint, and set the bottles upon his table jingling
dangerously, she flew to him and came, somehow, into his arms.

They had not told him--at first he could not speak. Dumbly he sat, his
face bowed upon that brown head pillowed in his arms. She had told
herself that she was a woman now--yet her first words were all girl.

"Tell me just once that I'm pretty," she quavered. "Say that I am
still--half boy--to you!"

His tongue unsteadied with joy, he told her again, as he had told her
on that other day; and watching the old, old wonder of her grow in his
eyes, she listened as though she were taking the words, one by one,
from his lips. But there was nothing boyish in the crooked little arch
of her mouth--nothing boyish in the depths of her dark and brimming
eyes. She remembered his wincing shoulder then; her arms crept higher
about his neck. And now her face was uplifted and there was no more
need for words.

Afterward, when they spoke of Big Louie, she loved him more for the
sorrow which he did not