eered Foster Booth, who
is forty, walking side by side with his son Charley who is twenty.
Charley's mother died when he was born, and when Charley enlisted
Foster said he'd never yet let Charley go anywhere he daren't go
himself, and he didn't mean to begin with the Flanders trenches. At the
station Dog Monday nearly went out of his head. He tore about and sent
messages to Jem by them all. Mr. Meredith read an address and Reta
Crawford recited 'The Piper.' The soldiers cheered her like mad and
cried 'We'll follow--we'll follow--we won't break faith,' and I felt so
proud to think that it was my dear brother who had written such a
wonderful, heart-stirring thing. And then I looked at the khaki ranks
and wondered if those tall fellows in uniform could be the boys I've
laughed with and played with and danced with and teased all my life.
Something seems to have touched them and set them apart. They have
heard the Piper's call.

"Fred Arnold was in the battalion and I felt dreadfully about him, for
I realized that it was because of me that he was going away with such a
sorrowful expression. I couldn't help it but I felt as badly as if I
could.

"The last evening of his leave Fred came up to Ingleside and told me he
loved me and asked me if I would promise to marry him some day, if he
ever came back. He was desperately in earnest and I felt more wretched
than I ever did in my life. I couldn't promise him that--why, even if
there was no question of Ken, I don't care for Fred that way and never
could--but it seemed so cruel and heartless to send him away to the
front without any hope of comfort. I cried like a baby; and yet--oh, I
am afraid that there must be something incurably frivolous about me,
because, right in the middle of it all, with me crying and Fred looking
so wild and tragic, the thought popped into my head that it would be an
unendurable thing to see that nose across from me at the breakfast
table every morning of my life. There, that is one of the entries I
wouldn't want my descendants to read in this journal. But it is the
humiliating truth; and perhaps it's just as well that thought did come
or I might have been tricked by pity and remorse into giving him some
rash assurance. If Fred's nose were as handsome as his eyes and mouth
some such thing might have happened. And then what an unthinkable
predicament I should have been in!

"When poor Fred became convinced that I couldn't promise him, he
behaved beauti