“You can give Jean whatever you think best,” he told the Doctor, “but I shall try to live on what I have until I go, and then on my pay.”

“Your pay, my dear boy, will just about equal what you now spend in tips.”

“I think I shall like it.  It’s an adventure for rich men when they have to be poor.  That’s why a lot of fellows have gone into it.  They are tired of being the last word in civilization.  They want to get down to primitive things.”

“Mrs. Witherspoon can’t imagine Derry Drake without two baths a day.”

“Can’t she?  Well, Mrs. Witherspoon may find that Derry Drake is about like the rest of the fellows.  No better and no worse.  There is no disgrace in liking to be clean.  The disgrace comes when one kicks against a thing that can’t be helped.”

In the Doctor’s car, therefore, they arrived at Drusilla’s.

“We have come to tell you that we are going to be married.”

“You Babes in the Wood!”

“Will you come to the wedding?

“Of course I’ll come.  Marion, do you hear?  They are going to be married.”

“And after that, Drusilla,”—­he smiled as he phrased it—­“your Tin Soldier will go to the wars.”

Jean glanced from one to the other.  “Is that what she called you—­a Tin Soldier?”

“It is what I called myself.”

Marion having come forward to say the proper thing, added, “Drusilla’s going, too.”

“Drusilla?”

“Yes, with my college unit—­to run errands in a flivver.”

The next day, encountering Derry on the street, Drusilla opened her knitting bag and brought out a tiny parcel.  “It’s my wedding gift to you.  I found it in Emily’s toy shop.”

It was a gay little French tin soldier.  “For a mascot;” she told him, seriously.  “Derry, dear, I shall not try to tell you how I feel about your marriage to Jean.  About your going.  If I could sing it, you’d know.  But I haven’t any words.  It—­it seems so—­perfect that the Tin Soldier should go—­to the wars—­and that the girl he leaves behind him should be a little white maid like—­Jean.”

Thus Drusilla, with a shake in her voice, renouncing a—­dream.

Derry, who was on his way to Margaret’s showed the tin soldier to Teddy and his little sister.  “He is going to the wars.”

“With you?”

“Yes.”

“When are you going?”

“As soon as I can—­”

“I should think you wouldn’t like to leave us.”

“Well, I don’t.  But I am coming back.”

“Daddy didn’t come back.”

“But some men do.”

“Perhaps God doesn’t love you as much as He did Daddy, and He won’t want to keep you.”

“Perhaps not—­”

The things which the child had spoken stayed with Derry all that day.  His feeling about death had always been that of a man who has long years before him.  He had rather jauntily conceded that some men die young, but that the chances in his case were for a green old age.  He might indeed have fifty years before him, and in fifty years one could—­get ready—­age had to do with serious things, people were peaceful and prepared.