thanks to you in the mess, Miss Tommy, after old Bob
here had gone. Some one was to write and tell him about it, but I don't
believe anyone ever did. I say, you must have had a cheery time--all the
funny things that ever happened seemed to come your way."

Cecilia stammered something, her scarlet confusion deepening. A rather
grim vision of the war years swept across her mind--of the ceaseless
quest in papers and journals, and wherever people talked, for "funny
things" to tell Bob; and of how, when fact and rumour gave out, she used
to sit by her attic window at night, deliberately inventing merry jests.
It had closely resembled a job of hard work at the time; but apparently
it had served its purpose well. She had made them laugh; and some one
had told her that no greater service could be rendered to the boys who
risked death, and worse than death, during every hour of the day and
night. But it was extremely difficult to talk about it afterwards.

Bob took pity on her.

"I'll tell you just what sort of a cheery time she had, some time or
other," he remarked. "What are you fellows doing this evening?"

"We were just going to ask you the same thing," declared Billy. "Can't
we all go and play about somewhere? We've just landed, and we want to be
looked after. Any theatres in this little town still?"

"Cheer-oh!" ejaculated Billy. "Let's all go and find out."

So they went, and managed very successfully to forget war and even
stepmothers. They were all little more than children in enjoyment of
simple pleasures still, since war had fallen upon them at the very
threshold of life, cutting them off from all the cheery happenings that
are the natural inheritance of all young things. The years that would
ordinarily have seen them growing tired of play had been spent in grim
tasks; now they were children again, clamouring for the playtime they
had lost. They found enormous pleasure in the funny little French
restaurant, where Madame, a lady whose sympathies were as boundless
as her waist, welcomed them with wide smiles, delighting in the
broken French of Billy and Harrison, and deftly tempting them to fresh
excursions in her language. She put a question in infantile French to
Bob presently, whereupon that guileless youth, with a childlike smile,
answered her with a flood of idiomatic phrases, in an accent purer than
her own--collapsing with helpless laughter at her amazed face. After
which, Madame neglected her other patrons