The woman who opened the door at his knock stood before him a living link with that dreamlike past, unchanged except in minor details, a little more spare perhaps and grayer for the years he had been gone, but dressed in the same dull black, with the same spotless apron, the same bit of a white lace cap over her thin hair, the same pince-nez astride a high bony nose.

Aunt Lavina did not know him in his uniform.  He made himself known.  The old lady gazed at him searchingly.  Her lips worked.  She threw her arms about his neck, laughing and sobbing in the same breath.

“Surely, it’s myself,” Thompson patted her shoulder.  “I’m off to the front in a few days and I thought I’d better look you up.  How’s Aunt Hattie?”

Aunt Lavina disengaged herself from his arms, her glasses askew, her faded old eyes wet, yet smiling as Thompson could not recall ever seeing her smile.

“What a spectacle for the neighbors,” she said breathlessly.  “Me, at my time of life, hugging and kissing a soldier on the front step.  Do come in, Wesley.  Harriet will be so pleased.  My dear boy, you don’t know how we have worried about you.  How well you look.”

She drew him into the parlor.  A minute later Aunt Harriet, with less fervor than her sister perhaps, made it clear that she was unequivocally glad to see him, that any past rancor for his departure from grace was dead and buried.

They were beyond the sweeping current of everyday life, living their days in a back eddy, so to speak.  But they were aware of events, of the common enemy, of the straining effort of war, and they were proud of their nephew in the King’s uniform.  They twittered over him like fond birds.  He must stay his leave out with them.

At this pronunciamento of Aunt Lavina’s a swift glance passed between the two old women.  Thompson caught it, measured the doubt and uneasiness of the mutual look, and was puzzled thereby.

But he did not fathom its source for a day or two, and only then by a process of deduction.  They treated him handsomely, they demonstrated an affection which moved him deeply because he had never suspected its existence. (They had always been so precise, almost harsh with him as a youngster.) But their living was intolerably meager.  Disguise it with every artifice, a paucity of resource—­or plain niggardliness—­betrayed itself at every meal.  Thompson discarded the theory of niggardliness.  And proceeding thence on the first conclusion stood his two aunts in a corner—­figuratively, of course—­and wrung from them a statement of their financial status.

They were proud and reluctant.  But Thompson had not moved among and dealt with men of the world to be baffled by two old women, so presently he was in possession of certain facts.

They had not been able to support themselves, to rear and educate him, on their income alone, and gradually their small capital had been consumed.  They were about to negotiate the sale of their home, the proceeds of which would keep them from want—­if they did not live too long.  They tried to make light of it, but Thompson grasped the tragedy.  They had been born in that brick cottage with the silver birch before the door.