ve got Leonard all to myself," cried
Herbert, who, like all the others, was jealous of Marjorie, but did not
scruple to show it.

"Ha-ha! Who's jealous now?" said Leonard, putting his head down on
Herbert's. Marjorie lay down on the quilt at the foot of the bed. Her
restless eyes watched a light from the driveway scurry across the bed
and zig-zag over the faces of the two brothers. Like a sudden flame
struck from a match it lit a metal object on the shelf over the bed. Ah,
it looked grim and incongruous in that peaceful English nursery! Once it
had been one among a golden sea of helmets, sweeping across a great
plain like a river. The sun smote upon gleaming bayonets, passing with
the eternal regularity of waves. Last autumn the world had shaken under
the tread of the feet marching toward Paris.

The light clung to the glittering object, and then scudded away.
Marjorie's eyes kept closing. Suddenly, and oh, so vividly, there came
the memory of another garden; the cold, brooding stillness of the winter
air, and the sun sifting through the diamond windows of the
summer-house, and shining on the dancing letters of the lesson-book and
on his yellow hair. Then she heard Leonard's laughter and was back again
in the present. How could he laugh like that! It was because he was so
young. They were all so young!

"Good night, old man," said Leonard, pulling himself up from Herbert's
bed; "don't forget me."

Three times Herbert called him back, and when Leonard returned and stood
beside him, the little boy wriggled apologetically.

"Play with me," he said, plaintively.

"Play with you! I'll stand you on your head instead," said Leonard, and
put his arm around Marjorie.

But Herbert continued to call to the emptiness.

Leonard and Marjorie paused on the landing, and he reached up and spread
his hand over the face of the clock.

"Stop moving!" he said.

"You're just about three years old to-night," said Marjorie.

"I know--I know," he said. Suddenly, with an impulse and gesture of
childlike and terrible longing, he put both his arms about Marjorie. His
face wore an expression that she could never forget. Looking up at him
with wide, tearless eyes, she felt in that one uncontrolled moment that
she knew him better than she ever would again. She felt wonderfully old,
immeasurably older than Leonard, older than the whole world. With a love
almost impersonal in its unconscious motherliness, she yearned with the
mighty power