and. As he stood, he saw Jerry pulling the pung under a shed at the
back of the barn. He knew Charlotte hadn't seen him, didn't intend to
take the time to see him, but would presently be back with Jerry's
ultimatum. That was her system. She implicitly followed Jerry's command,
a command she had already put into his mouth. It was so accepted a part
of the household routine that he had ceased to think of it as in the
least unusual. She was back again almost at once.

"Jerry says he'd be happy to, to-day," she announced, "so long's as he
ain't changed back into his barn clo'es. We'll be kinder company. But
after this, he says, we'll begin as usual."

So presently they sat down together to the crackly brown turkey and
Raven carved and fought off Charlotte, who rose from her place in a
majestic authority which seemed the highest decorum to take the fork and
pick out titbits for his plate, and they talked of countryside affairs,
but never, Raven was grateful to notice, of his absence or of France.
Once Jerry did begin a question relative to "them long range guns," but
Charlotte bore him down before Raven could lay hold of the question,
even if he had been eager for it.

"Jerry's forbid me to ask you the leastest thing about how 'twas over
there," she said smoothly, without a look at Jerry, but a direct
intention that was like a swift secret communication between them, a
line not even to be tapped. "He says, 'We won't say one word about what
Mr. Raven's been through, not if he begins to talk about it himself.
He's been through enough,' says he. 'Now le's let him turn his mind to
suthin' else.'"

"Yes," said Jerry boldly, "I guess that's pretty nigh what I said--what
I'd say now, anyways."

Raven smiled a little inwardly, as he often did at "Mr. Raven." He and
Jerry and Charlotte had been neighbors, and he, being younger, was
always "young John" to them, and sometimes, in excess of friendliness or
exhortation, "Jack." He wondered if it had been the social idealism of
Anne that had made them attain the proper title, or if, when the crust
of renewed convention broke through, they would, under the stress of
common activities, flounder about as they did before he went away, in an
intermittent familiarity.

"All the houses shut up," he said, "the summer houses?"

"Yes," said Charlotte, eating her wing delicately, perhaps with a
thought of Anne. "City folks all gone. Went early this year, too. Wood's
so high now, if they ain'