d, as he came in. "I just want to
listen and do nothing."

She glanced up at him. He looked tired, unlike himself, depressed.

"Anything the matter?"

"Father isn't well. Dr. McKenzie has taken the case. Richards has
gone to the front. Bronson will call me if there are any unfavorable
developments."

Margaret-Mary, curled up like a kitten in the curve of Cousin Derry's
arm, was exploring his vest pocket. She found two very small squares
of Washington taffy wrapped in wax paper, one for herself and one for
Teddy. It was Derry's war-time offering. No other candies were
permitted by Margaret's patriotism. Her children ate molasses on their
bread, maple sugar on their cereal. Her soldier was in France, and
there were other soldiers, not one of whom should suffer because of the
wanton waste of food by the people who stayed softly at home.

"You tell us a story, Uncle Derry," Teddy pleaded as he ate his taffy.

"I'd rather listen to your mother."

"They are tired of me," Margaret told him.

"We are not ti-yard," her small son enunciated carefully, "but you said
you had to fix the f'owers."

"Well, I have. May I turn them over to you, Derry?"

"For a minute. But you must come back."

She came back presently, to find the lights out and only the glow of
the fire to illumine faintly the three figures on the sofa. She stood
unseen in the door and listened.

"And so the Tin Soldier stood on the shelf where the little boy had put
him, and nothing happened in the old, old house. There was just an
old, old man, and walls covered with old, old portraits, and knights in
armor, and wooden trumpeters carved on the door who blew with all their
might, 'Trutter-a-trutt, Trutter-a-trutt'--. But the old man and the
portraits and the wooden trumpeters had no thought for the Tin Soldier
who stood there on the shelf, alone and longing to go to the war. And
at last the Tin Soldier cried out, 'I can't stand it. I want to go to
the wars--I want to go to the wars!' But nobody listened or cared."

"Poor 'itte sing," Margaret-Mary crooned.

"If I had been there," Teddy proclaimed, "I'd have put him on the floor
and told him to run and run and run!"

"But there was nobody to put him on the floor," said Derry, "so at last
the Tin Soldier could stand it no longer. 'I will go to the wars, I
will go to the wars,' he cried, and he threw himself down from the
shelf."

The story stopped suddenly. "Go on, go on," urged th