g man alongside looked at this cold and creaking manoeuvre with
disapproval, even disgust.

"Can't you holler?" he asked.

No, Raymond could not "holler." The dead hand of conscious propriety was
upon him, checking any momentum that might lead to a spontaneous
expression of patriotic feeling. The generous human juices could not
run--could not even get started. When he said good-bye to Albert, it was
not as to a son, nor even to a friend's son. Albert himself might have
objected to any emotional expression that was too clearly to be seen;
but he would have welcomed one which, cloaked in an unembarrassing
obscurity, might at least have been felt. Johnny McComas frankly let
himself "go," not only with Tom, but with Albert too. Albert could not
but think within himself that it was all somewhat overdone; he was a bit
abashed, even if not quite shamefaced. But the recollection of Johnny's
warm hand-clasp and vibrant voice sometimes came to comfort him, in camp
across the water, at times when the picture of his own father's chill
adieux brought little aid.

IV

A few brief months ended the foreign service of both our young men.
Albert came home invalided, and Tom McComas along with others, lay dead
between the opposing lines of trenches. His father would not, at first,
credit the news. His son's very strength and vigor had helped build up
his own exuberant optimism. It simply could not be; his son, his only
remaining son, a happy husband, a gratified parent.... But the truth
bore in, as the truth will, and McComas had his days of
rebellious--almost of blasphemous--protest. The proud monument at
Roselands was taking a cruel toll. His other son was commemorated on the
third side of its base; but though a fresh unfrayed flag waved for
months over turf below which no one lay, it was long before that great
granite block came to betray to the world this latest and cruelest
bereavement.

Albert, whose injuries had made him appear as likely to be a useless
piece on the board for longer than the army surgeons thought worth
while, was sent back home and made his convalescence under the care of
his mother; within her house, indeed--for his father had no quarters to
offer him. Among McComas's flower-beds and garden-paths he enjoyed the
ministrations of a physician other and better than any that practices on
those fields of hate--one who complemented the prosaic physical cares
required for the body with an affluent stream of healin