A curious little household surely, one that made the wife of the Portier shake her head, and speak much beneath her breath with the wife of the brushmaker about the Americans having queer ways and not as the Austrians.

The short month had seen a change in all of them.  Peter showed it least of all, perhaps.  Men feel physical discomfort less keenly than women, and Peter had been only subconsciously wretched.  He had gained a pound or two in flesh, perhaps, and he was unmistakably tidier.  Anna Gates was growing round and rosy, and Harmony had trimmed her a hat.  But the real change was in Harmony herself.

The girl had become a woman.  Who knows the curious psychology by which such changes come—­not in a month or a year; but in an hour, a breath.  One moment Harmony was a shy, tender young creature, all emotion, quivering at a word, aloof at a glance, prone to occasional introspection and mysterious daydreams; the next she was a young woman, tender but not shyly so, incredibly poised, almost formidably dignified on occasion, but with little girlish lapses into frolic and high spirits.

The transition moment with Harmony came about in this wise:  They had been settled for three weeks.  The odor of stewing cabbages at the Pension Schwarz had retired into the oblivion of lost scents, to be recalled, along with its accompanying memory of discomfort, with every odor of stewing cabbages for years to come.  At the hospital Jimmy had had a bad week again.  It had been an anxious time for all of them.  In vain the sentry had stopped outside the third window and smiled and nodded through it; in vain—­when the street was deserted and there was none to notice—­he went through a bit of the manual of arms on the pavement outside, ending by setting his gun down with a martial and ringing clang.

In vain had Peter exhausted himself in literary efforts, climbing unheard-of peaks, taking walking-tours through such a Switzerland as never was, shooting animals of various sorts, but all hornless, as he carefully emphasized.

And now Jimmy was better again.  He was propped up in bed, and with the aid of Nurse Elisabet he had cut out a paper sentry and set it in the barred window.  The real sentry had been very much astonished; he had almost fallen over backward.  On recovering he went entirely through the manual of arms, and was almost seen by an Oberst-lieutenant.  It was all most exciting.

Harmony had been to see Jimmy on the day in question.  She had taken him some gelatin, not without apprehension, it being her first essay in jelly and Jimmy being frank with the candor of childhood.  The jelly had been a great success.

It was when she was about to go that Jimmy broached a matter very near his heart.

“The horns haven’t come, have they?” he asked wistfully.

“No, not yet.”

“Do you think he got my letter about them?”

“He answered it, didn’t he?”