The Big Blue Soldier (Musaicum Romance Classics). Grace Livingston Hill

Miss Marilla’s big sunny kitchen. Steadily, appetizingly, there grew an array of salads and pies and cakes and puddings and cookies and doughnuts and biscuits and pickles and olives and jellies; while a great bird, stuffed to bursting, went through the seven stages of its final career to the oven.

      But no, it was five o’clock. The bird, with brown and shining breast, was waiting in the oven, “done to a turn.” Mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, succotash, and onions had received the finishing touches and had only to be served. Cranberries, pickles, celery, and jelly gave the final touches to a perfect table, and the sideboard fairly groaned under its load of pies and cake. One might have thought a whole regiment was to dine with Miss Marilla Chadwick that day, from the sights and smells that filled the house. Up in the spare room, the fire glowed in the Franklin heater, and a geranium glowed in a west window between spotless curtains to welcome the guest. Now there was nothing left for the two women to do but the final anxiety.

      Mary Amber had her part in that, perhaps even more than her hostess and friend, for she was jealous for Miss Marilla and was youthfully incredulous. She had no trust in Dick Chadwick, even though he was an officer and had patrolled an enemy country for a few months after the war was over.

      Mary Amber had slipped over to her own house when she finished mashing the potatoes and changed her gown. She was putting little pats of butter on the bread-and-butter plates now, and the setting sun cast a halo of burnished light over her gold hair and brightened up the silk of her brown gown with its touches of wood-red. She was beautiful to look upon as she stood with her butter knife, deftly cutting the squares and dropping them in just the right spot on the plates. But there was a troubled look in her eyes as she glanced, from time to time, at the older woman over by window.

      Miss Marilla had ceased all thought of work and was intent only on the road toward the station. It seemed as if not until this moment had her great faith failed her, and the thought come to her that perhaps he might not come. “You know, of course, he might not get that train,” she said meditatively. “The other leaves only half an hour later. But she said she’d tell him to take this one.”

      “That’s true, too,” said Mary Amber cheerily. “And nothing will be hurt by waiting. I’ve fixed those mashed potatoes so they won’t get soggy by being too hot, and I’m sure they’ll keep hot enough.”

      “You’re a good, dear girl, Mary Amber,” said Miss Marilla, giving her a sudden impulsive kiss. “I only wish I could do something great and beautiful for you.”

      Miss Marilla caught up her shawl and hurried toward the door.

      “I’m going out to the gate to meet him,” she said with a smile. “It’s time he was coming in a minute now, and I want to be out there without hurrying.”

      She clambered down the steps, her knees trembling with excitement. She hoped Mary Amber had not looked out the window. A boy was coming on a bicycle; and if he should be a boy with a telegram or a special-delivery letter, she wanted to read it before Mary Amber saw her. Oh, how awful if anything had happened that he couldn’t come to-day! Of course, he might come later to-night, or to-morrow. And a turkey would keep, though it was never so good as the minute it was taken out of the oven.

      The boy was almost to the gate now and—yes, he was going to stop. He was swinging one leg out with that long movement that meant slowing up. She panted forward with a furtive glance back at the house. She hoped Mary Amber was looking at the turkey and not out of the window.

      It seemed that her fingers had suddenly gone tired while she was writing her name in that boy’s book, and they almost refused to tear open the envelope as the boy swung on his wheel again and vanished down the road. She had presence of mind enough to keep her back to the house and the telegram in front of her as she opened it covertly, trying to keep the attitude of still looking eagerly down the road, while the typewritten, brief message got itself across to her tumultuous mind.

      Impossible to accept invitation. Have other engagements. Thanks just the same.

      (Signed)

       Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick

      Miss Marilla tore the yellow paper hastily and crumpled it into a ball in her hands as she stared down the road through brimming tears. She managed an upright position, but her knees were shaking under her, and an empty feeling came in her stomach. Across the sunset skies in letters of accusing size, there seemed to blaze the paragraphs from The Springhaven Chronicle, copied afterward in the country Gazette, about Miss Marilla Chadwick’s nephew, Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick, who was expected at his aunt’s home as soon as he landed in this country after a long and glorious career in other lands, and who would spend the weekend with his aunt, and “doubtless be heard from at the Springhaven Club House before he left.” Her throat caught with a strange little sound like a groan. Still, with her hand grasping the front gate convulsively, Miss Marilla stood and stared down the road, trying to think what to do, how to word a paragraph explaining why he did not come, how to explain to Mary Amber so that look of sweet incredulousness should not come into her eyes.

      Then suddenly, as she stared through her blur of tears, there appeared a straggling figure, coming around the bend of the road by the Hazard house. And Miss Marilla, with nothing at all in her mind but to escape from the watchful, loving eyes of Mary Amber for a moment longer till she could think what to say to her, staggered out the gate and down the road toward the person, whoever it was, that was coming slowly up the road.

      On stumbled Miss Marilla, nearer and nearer to the oncoming man, till suddenly through a blur of tears she noticed that he wore a uniform. Her heart gave a leap, and for a moment she thought it must be Dick; that he had been playing her a joke by the telegram and was coming on immediately to surprise her before she had a chance to be disappointed. It was wonderful how the years had done their halo work for Dick with Miss Marilla.

      She stopped short, trembling, one hand to her throat. Then, as the man drew nearer and she saw his halting gait, saw, too, his downcast eyes and whole dejected attitude, she somehow knew it wasn’t Dick. Never would he have walked to her home in that way. There had been a swagger about little Dick that could not be forgotten. The older Dick, crowned now with many honors, would not have forgotten to hold his head high.

      Unconscious of her attitude of intense interest, she stood, with hand still fluttering at her throat and eyes brightly on the man as he advanced.

      When he was almost opposite her, he looked up. He had fine eyes and good features; but his expression was bitter for one so young, and in the eyes, there was a look of pain.

      “Oh! Excuse me,” said Miss Marilla, looking around furtively to be sure Mary Amber could not see them so far away. “Are you in a very great hurry?”

      The young man looked surprised, amused, and slightly bored, but paused politely.

      “Not ‘specially,” he said, and there was a tone of dry sarcasm in his voice. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

      He lifted the limp little trench cap and paused to rest his lame knee.

      “Why, I was wondering if you would mind coming in and eating dinner with me,” spoke Miss Marilla eagerly, from a dry throat of embarrassment. “You see, my nephew’s a returned soldier, and I’ve just got word he can’t come. The dinner’s all ready to be dished up, and it needn’t take long.”

      “Dinner sounds good to me,” said the young man, with a grim glimmer of a smile. “I guess I can accommodate you, madam. I haven’t had anything to eat since I left camp last night.”

      “Oh! You poor child!” said Miss Marilla, beaming on him with a welcoming smile. “Now isn’t it fortunate I should have asked you?” As if there had been a throng of passing soldiers from which she might have chosen. “But are you sure I’m not keeping you from someone else who is waiting for you?”

      “If there’s anyone else waiting anywhere along the road for me, it’s all news to me, madam. And anyhow, you got here first, and I guess you have first rights.”

      He had swung into the easy, familiar vernacular of the soldier now, and for