"I'll have to think about it. May I come again and tell you?"

"Of course. I am dying to know."

Mrs. Flippin entered just then with a tall pitcher of lemonade and a
plate of delicate cakes. "I think Miss MacVeigh is looking mighty
fine," she said, "don't you, Major?"

He would not have dared to tell how fine she looked to him.

He limped across the room with the plate of cakes, and poured lemonade
into a glass for Madge. Her eyes followed his strong soldierly figure.
What a man he must have been before the war crippled him. What a man
he was still, and his strength was not merely that of body. She felt
the strength too of mind and soul.

"I think," said Mrs. Flippin that night, "that Major Prime is one of
the nicest men."

Madge was in bed. The nurse had made her ready for the night, and was
out on the porch with Mr. Flippin. Mrs. Flippin had fallen into the
habit of having a little nightly talk with Madge. She missed her
daughter, and Madge was pleasant and friendly.

"I think that Major Prime is one of the nicest men," repeated Mrs.
Flippin as she sat down beside the bed, "but what a dreadful thing that
he is lame."

"I am not sure," Madge said, "that it is dreadful."

She hastened to redeem herself from any possible charge of
bloodthirstiness.

"I don't mean," she said, "that it isn't awful for a man to lose his
leg. But men who go through a thing like that and come
out--conquerors--are rather wonderful, Mrs. Flippin."

Madge had hold of Mrs. Flippin's hand. She often held it in this quiet
hour, and the idea rather amused her. She was not demonstrative, and
it seemed inconceivable that she should care to hold Mrs. Flippins'
hand. But there was a motherliness about Mrs. Flippin, a quality with
which Madge had never before come closely in contact. "It is like the
way I used to feel when I was a little girl and said my prayers at
night," she told herself.

Madge did not say her prayers now. Nobody did, apparently. She
thought it rather a pity. It was a comfortable thing to do. And it
meant a great deal if you only believed in it.

"Do you say your prayers, Mrs. Flippin?" she asked suddenly.

Mrs. Flippin was getting used to Madge's queer questions. She treated
them as a missionary might treat the questions of a beautiful and
appealing savage, who having gone with him to some strange country was
constantly interrogatory.

"She don't seem to know anything about the things we do," Mrs