with
one another in telling tales of Ireland. Each marshaled forth his dearest,
greenest memory, clothed in its best, to fill the ears and heart of Jamie
O'Hara. Sometimes he smiled, and then there was a great, silent rejoicing
among the twelve; sometimes he asked for more, and then tongues tripped
over one another in mad effort to furnish forth a memory more wonderful
than all that had gone before. But more often he sat still and white, as
if he heard nothing. And in the midst of it all, as the lads drew each
day nearer to health, Sheila noted a new uneasiness among them. It was
Larry who spoke the trouble while the nurse was doing his dressings. He
whispered it, so the others should not hear.

"By rights we don't belong here. Well, they'll be movin' us soon as we're
mended, won't they?"

The nurse nodded.

"Invalided home. Ye know what that means?"

Again the nurse nodded.

"Mind ye, there's been never a word dropped atween us, but we're all
fearin' it like--" Larry rubbed his sleeve over his mouth twice before he
went on. "While we've got Jamie to think about, we can manage, but when
he's packed off somewheres--to learn readin' an' writin' for the
blind--an' we're scattered to the four winds o' Ireland, we'll be
realizin' for the first time what we are, just. Then what are we goin' to
do? I ask ye it honest, miss."

And honestly Sheila answered, "I don't know."

A day later "Granny" whispered over his dressings: "Faith there's a shadow
creeping over the sill. Can't ye be feeling it?" And the color-sergeant's
spirits failed to rise that day at all.

Yet for all their fears the inevitable day came upon them unawares and
caught them, as you might say, red-handed. Sheila had stolen a half-hour
from rest and was sitting with them, listening to Casey Ryan, the Galway
lad, tell of the fishing in Kilkieran Bay.

Larry took the words out of his mouth. "'Twill be the proud day for us all
when we cast our eyes on Irish wather again, whether 'tis in Dublin Bay or
off the Skerries."

"Aye, and smelling the thorn bloom and hearing the throstles sing!"
"Granny's" rejoicing followed on the heels of Larry's, while he shook his
fist at him in warning.

Larry threw a helpless look at Jamie and sank back on his pillow, while
Patsy roared his ultimatum: "I'd a deal sight rather hear a throstle sing
than see all the bloody wather in the world. Larry's fair mad about wather
ever since he went dirty for a fortnight at Vimy."