She walked to the window and rather unsteadily her hand arose to her breast.

“I wonder if I shall ever catch it....” she thought.  “I wonder what it will do to me...!”

CHAPTER XXI

Archey Forbes came back in the beginning of May and the first call he made was to the house on the hill.  He had brought with him a collection of souvenirs—­a trench-made ring, shrapnel fragments of curious shapes, the inevitable helmet and a sword handle with a piece of wire attached.

“It was part of our work once,” he said, “to find booby traps and make them harmless.  This was in a barn, looking as though some one had tried to hide his sword in the hay.  It looked funny to me, so I went at it easy and found the wire connected to a fuse.  There was enough explosive to blow up the barn and everybody around there, but it wouldn’t blow up a hill of bears when we got through with it.”

He coloured a little through his bronze.  “I thought you might like these things,” he awkwardly continued.

“Like them?  I’d love them!” said Mary, her eyes sparkling.

“I brought them for you.”

They were both silent for a time, looking at the souvenirs, but presently their glances met and they smiled at each other.

“Of course you’re going back to the factory,” she said; and when he hesitated she continued, “I shall rely on you to let me know how things are going on.”

Again he coloured a little beneath his bronze and Mary found herself watching it with an indefinable feeling of satisfaction.  And after he was gone and she was carrying the souvenirs to the den, she also found herself singing a few broken bars from the Blue Danube.

“Is that you singing!” shouted Helen from the library.

“Trying to.”

Helen came hurrying as though to see a miracle, for Mary couldn’t sing.  “Oh—­oh!” she said, her eyes falling on the helmet.  “Who sent it?  Wally Cabot?”

“No; Archey Forbes brought it.”

“Oh-ho!” said Helen again.  “Now I see-ee-ee!”

But if she did, she saw more than Mary.

“Perhaps she thinks I’m in love with him,” she thought, and though the reflection brought a pleasant sense of disturbance with it, it wasn’t long before she was shaking her head.

“I don’t know what it is,” she decided at last, “but I’m sure I’m not in love with him.”

As nearly as I can express it, Mary was in love with love, and could no more help it than she could help the crease in her chin or the dreaminess of her eyes.  If Archey had had the field to himself, her heart might soon have turned to him as unconsciously and innocently as a flower turns its petals to the sun.  But the day after Archey returned, Wally Cabot came back and he, too, laid his souvenirs at Mary’s feet.

It was the same Wally as ever.

He had also brought a piece of old lace for Aunt Cordelia, a jet necklace for Aunt Patty, a prison-camp brooch for Helen.  All afternoon he held them with tales of his adventures in the air, rolling up his sleeve to show them a scar on his arm, and bending his head down so they could see where a German ace had nicked a bit of his hair out.