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

      CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      Purling Brook, New York, November 1918

      And you don’t think maybe I ought to have had lemon custard to go with the pumpkin instead of the mince?”

      Miss Marilla Chadwick turned from her anxious watching at the kitchen window to search Mary Amber’s clear, young eyes for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

      “Oh no, I think mince is much better. All men like mince pie, it’s so—sort of comprehensive, you know.”

      Miss Marilla turned back to her window, satisfied.

      “Well now, if he came on that train, he ought to be in sight around the bend of the road in about three minutes,” she said tensely. “I’ve timed it often when folks were coming out from town, and it always takes just six minutes to get around the bend of the road.”

      All through the months of the Great War, Miss Marilla had knitted and bandaged and emergencied and canteened with an eager, wistful look in her dreamy, gray eyes. And many a sweater had gone to some needy lad with the little thrilling remark as she handed it over to the committee, “I keep thinking, what if my nephew Dick should be needing one, and this just come along in time?”

      But when the war was over, and most people had begun to use pink and blue wool on their needles, or else cast them aside altogether and tried to forget there ever had been such a thing as war, and the price of turkey had gone up so high that people forgot to be thankful the war was over, Miss Marilla still held that wistful look in her eyes and still spoke of her nephew Dick with bated breath and a sigh. For wasn’t Dick among those favored few who were to remain and do patrol work for an indefinite time in the land of the enemy, while others were gathered to their waiting homes and eager loved ones? Miss Marilla spoke of Dick as one who still lingered on the borderland of terror and who laid his young life a continuous sacrifice for the good of the great world.

      A neat paragraph to that effect appeared in The Springhaven Chronicle, a local sheet that offered scant news items and fat platitudes at an ever-increasing rate to a gullible and conceited populace, who supported it because it was really the only way to know what one’s neighbors were doing. The paragraph was the reluctant work of Mary Amber, the young girl who lived next door to Miss Marilla and had been her devoted friend since the age of four, when Miss Marilla used to bake sugar cookies for her in the form of stodgy men with currant eyes and outstretched arms.

      Mary Amber remembered Nephew Dick as a young imp of nine, who’d made a whole long, beautiful summer ugly with his torments. She also knew that the neighbors all around had memories of that summer when Dick’s parents went on a Western trip and left him with his Aunt Marilla. Mary Amber shrank from exposing her dear friend to the criticisms of such readers of The Springhaven Chronicle as had memories of their cats tortured, their chickens chased, their flowerbeds trampled, their children bullied, and their windows broken by the youthful Dick.

      But time had softened the memories of that fateful summer in Miss Marilla’s mind, and besides, she was deeply in need of a hero. Mary Amber had not the heart to refuse to write the paragraph, but she made it as conservative as the circumstances allowed.

      But now, at last, among the latest to be sent back, Lieutenant Richard Chadwick’s division was coming home!

      Miss Marilla read in the paper what day they would sail and that they were expected to arrive not later than the twenty-ninth. And as she read, she conceived a wild and daring plan. Why shouldn’t she have a real, live hero herself? A bit belated, of course, but all the more distinguished for that. And why shouldn’t Mary Amber have a whole devoted soldier boy of her own for the village to see and admire? Not that she told Mary Amber that, oh no! But in her mind’s vision, she saw herself, Mary Amber, and Dick all going together to church on Sunday morning, the bars on his uniform gleaming like the light in Mary Amber’s hazel eyes. Miss Marilla had one sudden pang of fear when she thought that perhaps he would not wear his uniform home, now that everybody else was in citizen’s clothing; then her sweet faith in the wholesomeness of all things came to her rescue, and she smiled in relief. Of course he would wear it to come home; that would be too outrageous not to, when he had been a hero. Of course, he would wear it the first few days. And that was a good reason why she must invite him at once to visit her, instead of waiting until he had been to his home and been demobilized. She must have him in his uniform. She wanted the glory of it for her own brief share in that great time of uplifting and sacrifice that was so fast going into history.

      So Miss Marilla had hastened into the city to consult a friend who worked in the Red Cross and went out often to the wharves to meet the incoming boats. This friend promised to find out just when Dick’s division was to land, to hunt him up herself, and to see that he had the invitation at once. “See that he came,” she put it, with a wise reservation in her heart that the dear, loving soul should not be disappointed.

      And now, the very night before, this friend had called Miss Marilla on the telephone to say she had information that Dick’s ship would dock at eight in the morning. It would probably be afternoon before he could get out to Springhaven, so she had better arrange to have dinner about half past five. So Miss Marilla, with shining eyes and a heart that throbbed like a young girl’s, had thrown her shawl over her shoulders and hastened in the twilight through the hedge to tell Mary Amber.

      Mary Amber, trying to conceal her inward doubts, had congratulated Miss Marilla and promised to come over the first thing in the morning to help get dinner. Promised also, after much urging, almost with tears on the part of Miss Marilla, to stay and help eat the dinner afterward, in company with Miss Marilla and the young lieutenant. From this part of her promise Mary Amber’s soul recoiled, for she had no belief that the young leopard with whom she had played at the age of ten could have changed his spots in the course of a few years, or even covered them with a silver bar. But Mary Amber soon saw that her presence at the dinner was an intrinsic part of Miss Marilla’s joy in the anticipation of the dinner; and, as much as she disliked the position of being flung at the young lieutenant in this way, she promised. After all, what did it matter what he thought of her anyway, since she had no use for him? And then she could always quietly freeze him whenever Miss Marilla’s back was turned. Mary Amber could freeze with her hazel eyes when