he was
standing in the window as we passed. Eddie took off his cap and waved to
her, and she returned the wave as well as she could without having the
children see her. That would never have done, seeing that she was the
teacher, and substituting at that. But when we turned the corner we
noticed that she was still standing at the window and leaning out just a
bit, even at the risk of being indiscreet.

When the 10:15 pulled out Eddie stood on the bottom step, with his cap
off, looking I can't tell you how boyish, and straight, and clean, and
handsome, with his lips parted, and his eyes very bright. The
hairy-chested recruiting officer stood just beside him, and suffered by
contrast. There was a bedlam of good-byes, and last messages, and
good-natured badinage, but Eddie's mother's eyes never left his face
until the train disappeared around the curve in the track.

Well, they got a new boy at Kunz's--a sandy-haired youth, with pimples,
and no knack at mixing, and we got out of the habit of dropping in there,
although those fall months were unusually warm.

It wasn't long before we began to get postcards--pictures of the naval
training station, and the gymnasium, and of model camps and of drills,
and of Eddie in his uniform. His mother insisted on calling it his
sailor suit, as though he were a little boy. One day Josie Morehouse
came over to Mrs. Houghton's with a group picture in her hand. She
handed it to Eddie's mother without comment. Mrs. Houghton looked at it
eagerly, her eye selecting her own boy from the group as unerringly as a
mother bird finds her nest in the forest.

"Oh, Eddie's better looking than that!" she cried, with a tremulous
little laugh. "How funny those pants make them look, don't they? And
his mouth isn't that way, at all. Eddie always had the sweetest mouth,
from the time he was a baby. Let's see some of these other boys.
Why--why----"

Then she fell silent, scanning those other faces. Presently Josie bent
over her and looked too, and the brows of both women knitted in
perplexity. They looked for a long, long minute, and the longer they
looked the more noticeable became the cluster of fine little wrinkles
that had begun to form about Mrs. Houghton's eyes.

When finally they looked up it was to gaze at one another questioningly.

"Those other boys," faltered Eddie's mother, "they--they don't look like
Eddie, do they? I mean----"

"No, they don't," agreed Josie. "They look