the child cecily waited until her brother had made a bridge from a fallen bough, and then clasping her adorably grubby hands about his neck allowed him to carry her across the stream.

“which way, little sister?” he asked.

a dragon-fly hovered above the water and then darted away, and cecily with a vague idea of following it chose a sunken path that almost traced the brook in its course. it was a silent little stream running through the sleepy meadows, and where it widened among the pond lilies it almost stopped. here and there it eddied self-consciously about the yellow flowers and further on it almost rippled in shy haste. and in the golden afternoon cecily knew that the boy, so clever at building bridges, so capable in the midst of barbed wire, and above all, so kind to her, was wonderful beyond all telling.

when three tiny aeroplanes flew above the trenches, it reminded the boy of the dragon-flies over the brook at home, and once when he crawled through the mud and helped cut away some barbed wire, the barbed wire made him think of a bit of the brook which ran through the pasture. he remembered the wire had made a breakwater of drifting leaves and that cecily had thrown stones at the leaves until they had slowly floated away in a p. 112great clump. and because he imagined himself a victim of unmanly sentiment, he detested these memories; so that after a while they returned no more.

at the training camp he had learned, or thought he had learned, the trick of withdrawing a bayonet after a supposedly unparried lunge. but here as he slipped in the wet snow trying to release the driven bayonet, the thing caught and tore and ripped the flesh. and to keep from falling he crushed and mangled the face beneath him with his heel. . .

cecily in the twilight pressed her face against the window pane. the gaunt branch of a tree waved and pointed across the snow, but the little frozen stream was hidden away.

the child thought that when the boy returned he would still be wonderful.

randolph edgar.