time when the little nest
at the far end of the sofa would be empty; when the click of knitting
needles would sound no more in the beautiful old room.

"There's me!" he whispered at length like a half-ashamed but
frightened boy.

Polly drew her glasses down and gave him a long, straight look full of
a deep and abiding love.

"You're the stitch, Peter my man," she whispered back as if fearing
someone might hear, "always the saving stitch. And take this to bed
with you, brother: the frazzling isn't half so dangerous as dry rot,
or moth eating holes in you. Queer, but I was getting to think of
myself as laid on the shelf before Brace drifted in, and when I do
that I get old-acting and stiff-jointed. But I've noticed that it's
the same with folks as it is with the world, when they begin to
flatten down, then the good Lord drops something into them to make 'em
sorter rise. No need to flatten down until you're dead. Feeling tired
is healthy and proper--not feeling at all is being finished. So now,
Peter, you just go along to bed. I always have felt that a man hates
to be set up for, but he can overlook a woman doing it; he sets it
down to her general foolishness, but Brace would just naturally get
edgy if he found us both up."

Peter came clumsily across the room and stood over the small creature
on the sofa. He wanted to kiss her. Instead, he said gruffly:

"See that the fire's banked, Polly. Looks as if I'd laid on a powerful
lot of wood without thinking." Then he laughed and went on: "You're
durned comical, Polly. What you said about the Lord putting yeast into
folks and the world _is_ comical."

"I didn't say yeast, Peter Heathcote."

"Well, yer meant yeast."

"No, I didn't mean yeast. I just meant something like Brace was
talking about to-day."

"What was it?" Peter stood round and solid with the firelight ruddily
upon him.

"He said that the fighting overseas ain't properly a war, but a
general upheaval of things that have got to come to the top and be
skimmed off. We ain't ever looked at it that way." Polly resorted to
familiar similes when deeply affected.

"I guess all wars is that." Peter looked serious. He rarely spoke of
the trouble that seemed far, far from his quiet, detached life, but
lately he had shaken his head over it in a new way. "But God ain't
meaning for us to take sides, Polly. It's like family troubles. You
don't understand them, and you better keep out. Just think of our good
German f