d handle them. But he found time at last to read
it, and when he laid it down he sat quite still from the shock of it.

And the next time he saw Drusilla he said to her, "Emily Bridges is
going to be married, and she is not going to marry me."

"I am glad of it," Drusilla told him.

"My dear girl, why?"

"Because you don't love her, and you never did."

CHAPTER XXVI

THE HOPE OF THE WORLD

The great spring drive of the Germans brought headlines to the papers
which men and women in America read with dread, and scoffed at when
they talked it over.

"They'll never get to Paris," were the words on their lips, but in
their hearts they were asking, "Will they--?"

Easter came at the end of March, and Good Friday found Jean working
very early in the morning on fawn-colored rabbits with yellow ears.
She worked in her bedroom because it was warmed by a feeble wood fire,
and Teddy came up to watch her.

"The yellow in their ears is the sun shining through," Jean told him.
"We used to see them in the country on the path in front of the house,
and the light from the west made their ears look like tiny electric
bulbs."

Margaret-Mary entranced by one small bunny with a splash of white for a
cotton tail, sang, "Pitty sing, pitty sing."

"They don't weally lay eggs, do they?" Teddy ventured.

"I wouldn't ask such questions if I were you, Teddy."

"Why not?"

"Because you might find out that they didn't lay eggs, and then you'd
feel terribly disappointed."

"Well, isn't it better to know?"

Jean shook her head. "I'm not sure--it's nice to think that they do
lay eggs--blue ones and red ones and those lovely purple ones, isn't
it?"

"Yes."

"And if they don't lay them, who does?"

"Hens," said Teddy, rather unexpectedly, "and the rab-yits steal them."

"Who told you that?"

"Hodgson. And she says that she ties them up in rags and the colors
come off on the eggs."

"Well, I wouldn't listen to Hodgson."

"Why not? I like to listen."

"Because she hasn't any imagination."

"What's 'magination?"

They were getting in very deep. Jean gave it up. "Ask your mother,
Teddy."

So Teddy sought his unfailing source of information. "What's
'magination, Mother."

"It is seeing things, Teddy, with your mind instead of your eyes. When
I tell you about the poor little children in France who haven't any
food or any clothes except what the Red Cross gives them, you don't
really see them with your eyes