"Sophy will feel differently when she has nursed some of our own soldiers in a French base-hospital," she said, addressing herself to the disapproving group.

The young girl raised her merry eyebrows. "Who'll stay and nurse Granny if I go to a French base-hospital? Troy, will you?" she suggested.

The other girls about the tea-table laughed. Though they were only Troy's age, or younger, they did not mind his being teased, for he seemed only a little boy to them, now that they all had friends or brothers in the training camps or on the way to France. Besides, though they disapproved of Sophy's tone, her argument was unanswerable. They knew that her precocious wisdom and self-confidence had been acquired at the head of her grandmother's household, and that there was no one else to look after poor old paralytic Mrs. Wicks and the orphan brothers and sisters to whom Sophy was mother and guardian.

Two or three of the young men present were in uniform, and one of them, Mrs. Belknap's nephew, had a captain's double bar on his shoulder. What did Troy Belknap and Sophy Wicks matter to young women playing a last tennis match with heroes on their way to France?

The game began again, with much noise and cheerful wrangling. Mrs. Belknap walked toward the house to welcome a group of visitors, and Miss Wicks remained beside the tea-table, alone with Troy. She was leaning back in a wide basket-chair, her thin ankles in white open-work stockings thrust out under her short skirt, her arms locked behind her thrown-back head. Troy lay on the ground and plucked at the tufts of grass at his elbow. Why was it that, with all the currents of vitality flowing between this group of animated girls and youths, he could feel no nearness but hers? The feeling was not particularly agreeable, but there was no shaking it off; it was like a scent that has got into one's clothes. He was not sure that he liked her, but he wanted to watch her, to listen to her, to defend her against the mockery and criticism in the eyes of the others. At this point his powers of analysis gave out, and his somewhat extensive vocabulary failed him. After all, he had to fall back on the stupid old school phrase. She was "his size"—that was all.

"Why do you always say the war bores you?" he asked abruptly, without looking up.

"Because it does, my boy; and so do you, when you hold forth about it."

He was silent, and she touched his arm with the tip of her swinging tennis-shoe. "Don't you see, Troy, it's not our job—not just now, anyhow. So what's the use of always jawing about it?"

She jumped up, recovered her racket, and ran to take her place in a new set beside Troy's cousin, the captain . . .

CHAPTER VI

IT was not "his job"—that was the bitter drop in all the gladness.