emembered how bare and
comfortless he had thought the room. Now it looked almost luxurious. And
he had been homesick, or fancied himself in that condition. Compared
to the homesickness he had known during the past eighteen months that
youthful seizure seemed contemptible and quite without excuse. He looked
about the room again, looked long and lovingly. Then, with a sigh of
content, drew from his pocket the two letters which had lain upon the
sitting-room table when he arrived, opened them and began to read.

Madeline wrote, as always, vivaciously and at length. The maternal
censorship having been removed, she wrote exactly as she felt. She could
scarcely believe he was really going to be at home when he received
this, at home in dear, quaint, queer old South Harniss. Just think,
she had not seen the place for ever and ever so long, not for over two
years. How were all the funny, odd people who lived there all the time?
Did he remember how he and she used to go to church every Sunday and sit
through those dreadful, DREADFUL sermons by that prosy old minister
just as an excuse for meeting each other afterward? She was SO sorry she
could not have been there to welcome her hero when he stepped from the
train. If it hadn't been for Mother's poor nerves she surely would have
been. He knew it, didn't he? Of course he did. But she should see him
soon "because Mother is planning already to come back to New York in a
few weeks and then you are to run over immediately and make us a LONG
visit. And I shall be so PROUD of you. There are lots of Army fellows
down here now, officers for the most part. So we dance and are very
gay--that is, the other girls are; I, being an engaged young lady, am
very circumspect and demure, of course. Mother carries The Lances about
with her wherever she goes, to teas and such things, and reads aloud
from it often. Captain Blanchard, he is one of the family's officer
friends, is crazy about your poetry, dear. He thinks it WONDERFUL. You
know what _I_ think of it, don't you, and when I think that _I_ actually
helped you, or played at helping you write some of it!

"And I am WILD to see your war cross. Some of the officers here have
them--the crosses, I mean--but not many. Captain Blanchard has the
military medal, and he is almost as modest about it as you are about
your decoration. I don't see how you CAN be so modest. If _I_ had a
Croix de Guerre I should want EVERY ONE to know about it. At the tea
d