t, to poke good-natured fun at
"old Fritz" and to make a jest of the German shells and the Flanders
mud, treating the whole great adventure of war as though it were the
finest game invented.

Yet back of the mirth and laughter in the blue eyes lurked something
new and strange and grave--inexpressibly touching--that indefinable
something which one senses shrinkingly in the young eyes of the boys who
have come back.

It hurt Sara somehow--that look of which she caught glimpses now and
then, in quiet moments, and she set herself to drive it away, or, at
least, to keep it at bay as much as possible, by filling every available
moment with occupation or amusement.

"I don't want him to think about what it was like--out there," she told
Molly. "His eyes make my heart ache, sometimes. They're too young to
have seen--such things. Suggest something we can play at to-day!"

So they threw themselves, heart and soul, into the task of entertaining
Tim, and, since he was very willing to be entertained, the weeks at
Sunnyside slipped by in a little whirl of gaiety, winding up with a
badminton tournament, at which Tim--whose right arm had not yet quite
recovered from the effects of the German bullet it had stopped--played
a left-handed game, and triumphantly maneuvered himself and his partner
into the semi-finals.

Probably--leniently handicapped, as they were, in the
circumstances--they would have won the tournament, but that, unluckily,
in leaping to reach a shuttle soaring high above his head, Tim
somehow missed his footing and came down heavily, with his leg twisted
underneath him.

"Broken ankle," announced Selwyn briefly, when he had made his
examination.

Tim opened his eyes--he had lost consciousness, momentarily, from the
pain.

"Damn!" he observed succinctly. "That'll make it the very devil of a
time before I can get back to France!" Then, to Sara, who could be heard
murmuring something about writing to Elisabeth: "Not much, old thing,
you don't! She'd fuss herself, no end. Just write--and say--it's a
sprain." And he promptly fainted again.

They got him back to Sunnyside while he was still unconscious, and when
he returned to an intelligent understanding of material matters, he
found himself in bed, with a hump-like excrescence in front of him
keeping the weight of the bedclothes from the injured limb.

"Did I faint?" he asked morosely.

"Yes. Lucky you did, too," responded Sara cheerfully. "Doctor Dick
rigged