I want you to meet our new minister and his wife.”

The young man turned and came into the room smiling, ready to greet the strangers, and was at once pleasantly impressed by them. A strong, fine-looking man of middle age, with nice dependable lines about his mouth and eyes and hair graying at the temple, and a sweet, quiet little woman with blue eyes and smiling lips—Dr. and Mrs. Culbertson. He was at once glad that his father and mother had such congenial neighbors, and a pastor who looked as if he might be a sensible man and a close friend. Paige, after he had shaken hands, did not carry out his purpose of excusing himself and getting away to his room, but stayed and stood talking with the rest in the genial home atmosphere, feeling that it was good indeed to be at home and enter into the old-time life of family and church and town. For the time his annoyances of the evening were forgotten, his uncertainties faded, his fears allayed. He was, within a few days, to be out of uniform and, like anyone else, a young man starting life with a respectable job and good prospects.

But he was glad that his father said nothing about his present employment, and he need not even think about it tonight. Things would clear up brightly by morning, of course, and he would soon be established in good and regular standing, associated with a firm that, at least in the eyes of the public, had a good name. If he found out later that the facts did not bear out this supposition, he could leave, couldn’t he? Why worry?

It developed that the minister was well acquainted with the chaplain who had been with young Madison’s company, and had a nephew who had for a time been one of Paige’s comrades. The minister stayed a little longer and they all sat down to talk again, so the hectic happenings of the earlier part of the evening were more or less wiped out of the young man’s thoughts. When the callers were gone and they all retired for the night, Paige went whistling up the stairs to his room with the old-time lilt in his voice, and his father said to his mother in the privacy of their room, “Well, Randa, the boy seems to be in good spirits again, sounds like his old self. I guess things must have gone well for him tonight.”

“Yes?” said the mother with a questioning sigh. “Perhaps.”

It was the next morning, about ten thirty, that Mrs. Harmon arrived at the side door of the Madison house, with a handsome bowl of strawberries in her hands, and knocked. Just as if it had been a custom all these years for her to call on Mrs. Madison. Just as if she hadn’t conscientiously treated the Madisons as if they didn’t exist.

Mrs. Madison happened to be near the side door and opened it herself, looking at her caller curiously. Oh, she recognized her, for she had often seen her going by, and once she had narrowly escaped being on her list for a war-drive campaign, but for an instant she wondered if her neighbor had made a mistake and thought she was going to the house on the other side of theirs. Then Mrs. Harmon’s condescending tones voiced her little speech about the strawberries, and she quickly adjusted her own sweet smile to the front.

“Oh, that was very nice of you,” she said. “Of course we like strawberries, and ours haven’t come into bearing yet. It’s early for them, isn’t it? Won’t you come in?”

To her surprise the invitation was accepted.

“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Harmon, “I will for just a minute or two. I’ve really been so busy. These war demands are so strenuous, aren’t they? I suppose you have been just as busy with all these drives and activities. And now your son is home from the war, isn’t he? At least somebody told me he was. Is that right? Has he come to stay, or will he be returning overseas, or to camp, or something?”

“No,” said the mother with a sigh of joy. “He is home now.”

“Oh, then I know you are very happy and feel like celebrating.