en red, and in the center
of this was a crude homemade star of gold, but all the pristine
brightness had gone from it.

The young man opened the door, laid down his suitcase, stepped into the
little sitting room, and taking down the tattered, faded symbol called
out, "What's this doing here? If that isn't like Hicksville! The war
over two years and--"

Just then the astonished and frightened face of a little, wizened old
lady appeared in the kitchen doorway.

"_Mother!_"

Then in another moment he was helping the trembling form to a chair and
laughing and stroking the gray hair and putting his arm around that
thin, wrinkled neck.

It was almost too much for her. She looked at him with a kind of terror
in her poor old eyes, as if she thought he was not real, and she clung
to him as if she were drowning.

"It's all right, Muddy," he laughed, kissing her and making a fine joke
of her bewilderment; "feel of me; here, pinch me. Ouch! See how real I
am? I'm hungry too, if anybody should ask you. I think I'll go up to
Ruth Jillett's house for supper--"

She only clung to him tighter--and cried a little more. "You was always
thinking of Ruth first," she said. "Joey, my eyes is not what they wuz,
I've seen you so much when I was alone here--in all the trouble--you
wouldn't fool me--Joey?"

For answer she got such a hug as no ghost could ever give. "Of course,
if you'd rather believe the Government than your own eyes.... Why here's
Sport! Hello, Sport, I'll leave it to you," he added, reaching down and
patting the dog whose tail was going like a pendulum. "Here's a woman
that doesn't--"

"Joey, you mustn't say that--you--you--"

"All right, old Muddy, then admit that I am me."

"I don't understand--I--Joey--"

Another hug, "Of course, you don't. You're just two years out of date.
You've been living among the dead and you think everybody's dead and I'm
going to--"

"You're not going to Ruth Jillett's, Joey--"

"Well, I certainly will if you don't get me some supper. How about that,
Sport? Here I am come home a rich man with three hundred dollars in my
pocket, and no supper."

"Joey, if I had only known I'd have made a meat pie. I won't believe
you're real till I see you eat, Joey." That would be a good test.

"We won't eat here many more times--"

"Oh yes, we will. I've got three hundred dollars, and two hundred of it
belongs to some boy scouts. They made me take it as a loan. We're going
to stay right here