last sweet note to a lingering close and stood quiet for a moment while
Betty's fingers rested on the keys. Then--

"That was very beautiful," said Mrs. Barnes, trying to speak in a
matter-of-fact tone. "You girls sing wonderfully together."

"We ought to," said Betty, forcing a lightness she did not feel, for as
usual she was the first to sense the tense quality in the atmosphere,
"for we have certainly had practice enough. We used to sing for the
soldier boys at the Hostess House almost every night."

"Yes, but it was sometimes very hard to make _them_ sing," added Amy.
"Often they didn't want to at first. But they always joined in toward
the end, and the gloomiest of them went away with a smile on his lips."

"They could afford to laugh," said Joe Barnes bitterly. He had left the
picture of his illustrious ancestor and had dropped down in his old
position on the edge of the table, leg swinging idly. But his expression
had changed. It was grim and hard.

Betty, looking at him, suddenly remembered, and she could see by the
expressions on the faces of her chums that they also had awakened to
the situation.

With horrible lack of tact, they had offended their kind host and
hostess. That they had not done so deliberately, helped their
self-condemnation not at all.

They had sung patriotic songs, they had spoken of their work at the
Hostess House and of the soldier boys, while Joe Barnes, of military age
and seemingly in perfect health, did not wear a uniform. Even though he
were a slacker, it was terribly bad taste to tell him so in his own
home, while accepting his, or his mother's, hospitality.

And something deep down in their hearts, intuition, perhaps, perhaps a
sort of sixth sense born of their wide experience of boys of all ages,
told them that he was not a slacker. There must be some reason, some
real excuse for his behavior.

"Won't you sing some more?" asked their hostess in an attempt to relieve
the situation, while she kept one eye anxiously on her son. "Surely you
haven't finished."

"I'm afraid we have," said Betty, with a gay little laugh, "for the very
good reason that we don't know any more songs to sing."

"And we want to hear some more real music," added Mollie, gamely
following her lead. "That is, if you are not tired."

"Oh, no, music never tires us," returned Mrs. Barnes, adding, with a
little entreating glance at her son: "Will you put on another record,
dear--something light and merr