On a day after that Brock came home from camp, and, though he might not tell it in words, she knew that he would sail shortly for France.  She kept the house full of brightness and movement for the three days he had at home, yet the four—­young Hugh on crutches now—­clung to each other, and on the last afternoon she and Brock were alone for an hour.  They had sat just here after tennis, in the hazy October weather, and pink-brown leaves had floated down with a thin, pungent fragrance and lay on the stone steps in vague patterns.  Scarlet geraniums bloomed back of Brock’s head and made a satisfying harmony with the copper of his tanned face.  They fell to silence after much talking, and finally she got out something which had been in her mind but which it had been hard to say.

“Brocky,” she began, and jabbed the end of her racket into her foot so that it hurt, because physical pain will distract and steady a mind.  “Brocky, I want to ask you to do something.”

“Yes’m,” answered Brock.

“It’s this.  Of course, I know you’re going soon, over there.”

Brock looked at her gravely.

“Yes, I know, I want to ask you if—­if it happens—­will you come and tell me yourself?  If it’s allowed.”

Brock did not even touch her hand; he knew well she could not bear it.  He answered quietly, with a sweet, commonplace manner as if that other world to which he might be going was a place too familiar in his thoughts for any great strain in speaking of it.  “Yes, Mummy,” he said.  “Of course I will.  I’d have wanted to anyway, even if you hadn’t said it.  It seems to me—­” He lifted his young face, square-jawed, fresh-colored, and there was a vision-seeing look in his eyes which his mother had known at times before.  He looked across the city lying at their feet, and the river, and the blue hills beyond, and he spoke slowly, as if shaping a thought.  “So many fellows have ‘gone west’ lately that there must he some way.  It seems as if all that mass of love and—­and desire to reach back and touch—­the ones left—­as if all that must have built a sort of bridge over the river—­so that a fellow might probably come back and—­and tell his mother—­”

Brock’s voice stopped, and suddenly she was in his arms, his face was against hers, and hot tears not her own were on her cheek.  Then he was shaking his head as if to shake off the strong emotion.

“It’s not likely to happen, dear.  The casualties in this war are tremendously lower than in—­”

“I know,” she interrupted.  “Of course, they are.  Of course, you’re coming home without a scratch, and likely a general, and conceited beyond words.  How will we stand you!”

Brock laughed delightedly.  “You’re a peach,” he stated.  “That’s the sort.  Laughing mothers to send us off—­it makes a whale of a difference.”