g of the brave
struggle he was making at the office where his days were spent, and in
the poor little shabbily furnished room where he would lie down on his
iron bed and try to rest and forget the war and not hear the noises
outside.

How he longed for Friday nights when the troop met, and when he could
forget himself in those diverting games!

Since the first few days of his return from France, he had seen but
little of the troop, except upon those gala nights. The boys were in
school and he at the office, and it seemed as if their two ways had
parted, after all his hopes that his return might find them reunited and
more intimate than ever before. But after the first joyous welcome, it
had not been so. It could not be so.

Of course, if they had known how he loved to just sit and listen to them
jolly the life out of Peewee Harris, they would doubtless have arranged
to do this every night for his amusement, for it made no difference to
them how much they jollied Peewee. If they had had the slightest inkling
that it helped him just to listen to Roy Blakeley's nonsense, they would
probably have arranged with Roy for a continuous performance, for so far
as Roy was concerned, there was no danger of a shortage of nonsense. But
you see they did not think of these things.

They did much for wounded soldiers, but Tom Slade was not a wounded
soldier. And so it befell that the very thing which he most needed was
the thing he did not have, and that was just the riot of banter and
absurdity which they called their meetings. At all this he would just
sit and smile and forget to interlace his fingers and jerk his head. And
sometimes he would even laugh outright.

I am afraid that everything was managed wrong from the first. It would
have been better if Mr. Burton or Mr. Ellsworth or somebody or other had
told the troop the full truth about Tom's condition. I suppose they
refrained for fear the boys would stare at him and treat him as one
stricken, and thereby, perhaps make his struggle harder.

At all events, it was hard enough. And little they knew of this new and
frightful war that he was struggling through with all the power of his
brave, dogged nature. Little they knew how he lay awake night after
night, starting at every chime of the city's clock, of how he did the
best he could each day, waiting and longing for Friday night, hoping,
_hoping_ that Peewee and Roy would surely be there. Poor, distracted,
shell-shocked fight