e in which
Chet was hidden came down with a crash, and Chet lay there, more than
ever indiscernible among its tender foliage.

Which brings us back to the English garden, the yellow chicken, Miss
Kate, and the letter.

His shattered leg was mended by one of those miracles of modern war
surgery, though he never again would dig his spurred heels into the
pine of a G. L. & P. Company pole. But the other thing--they put it
down under the broad general head of shock. In the lovely English
garden they set him to weaving and painting as a means of soothing the
shattered nerves. He had made everything from pottery jars to bead
chains, from baskets to rugs. Slowly the tortured nerves healed. But
the doctors, when they stopped at Chet's cot or chair, talked always of
"the memory center." Chet seemed satisfied to go on placidly painting
toys or weaving chains with his great, square-tipped fingers--the
fingers that had wielded the pliers so cleverly in his pole-climbing
days.

"It's just something that only luck or an accident can mend," said the
nerve specialist. "Time may do it--but I doubt it. Sometimes just a
word--the right word--will set the thing in motion again. Does he get
any letters?"

"His girl writes to him. Fine letters. But she doesn't know yet
about--about this. I've written his letters for him. She knows now
that his leg is healed and she wonders----"

That had been a month ago. Today Miss Kate slit the envelope
post-marked Chicago. Chet was fingering the yellow wooden chicken,
pride in his eyes. In Miss Kate's eyes there was a troubled, baffled
look as she began to read:

Chet, dear, it's raining in Chicago. And you know when it
rains in Chicago it's wetter, and muddier, and rainier than any
place in the world. Except maybe this Flanders we're reading
so much about. They say for rain and mud that place takes the
prize.

I don't know what I'm going on about rain and mud for, Chet
darling, when it's you I'm thinking of. Nothing else and
nobody else. Chet, I got a funny feeling there's something
you're keeping back from me. You're hurt worse than just the
leg. Boy, dear, don't you know it won't make any difference
with me how you look, or feel, or anything? I don't care how
bad you're smashed up. I'd rather have you without any
features at all than any other man with two sets. Whatever's
happened to the outside of you, they can't change your
inside