nting close to the gate-rail. A
few men in khaki were alighting from compartments. In a moment there was
a stamping of many feet, and above the roar and confusion in the station
rose the eager voices of multitudes of boys talking, shouting, calling
to each other.

Marjorie saw Leonard before he saw her. He was walking with three
men--joking, laughing absent-mindedly, while his eyes searched for a
face in the crowd. She waited a moment, hidden, suffocated with
anticipation, her heart turning over and over, until he said a
nonchalant good-bye to his companions, who were pounced upon by eager
relatives. Then she crept up behind and put both her hands about his
wrist.

"Hello, Len."

Joy leaped to his eyes.

"Marjie!"

Impossible to say another word. For seconds they became one of the
speechless couples, standing dumbly in the great dingy station,
unnoticed and unnoticing.

"Where's the carriage?" said Leonard, looking blindly about him.

"Outside, of course, Len."

A crooked man in black livery, with a cockade in his hat, who had been
standing reverently in the background, waddled forward, touching his
hat.

"Well, Burns, how are you? Glad to see you."

"Very well, sir, and thank you, sir. 'Appy, most 'appy to see you back,
sir. Pardon, sir, this way." His old face twitched and his eyes devoured
the young lieutenant.

A footman was standing at the horses' heads, but the big bays, champing
their bits, and scattering foam, crouched away from the tall young
soldier when he put out a careless, intimate hand and patted their
snorting noses. He swaggered a little, for all of a sudden he longed to
put his head on their arching necks and cry.

"You've got the old pair out; I thought they had gone to grass," he said
in his most matter-of-fact tone to the pink-faced footman, who was
hardly more than a child.

"Well, sir, the others were taken by the Government. Madam gave them all
away except Starlight and Ginger Girl. There is only me and Burns and
another boy under military age in the stables now, sir."

Inside the carriage Leonard and Marjorie were suddenly overawed by a
strange, delicious shyness. They looked at each other gravely, like two
children at a party, dumb, exquisitely thrilled. It was ten months ago
that they had said a half-tearful, half-laughing good-bye to each other
on the windy, sunny pier at Hoboken. They had been in love two months,
and engaged two weeks. Leonard was sailing for England to k