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“Good Lord!” he exclaimed, “the conquering hero!”—and plunged down into the tumult.

There was his father, his face rigid with repressed emotion, his hand shaking Stacey’s vigorously. And there were half a dozen of his old friends standing back to let the family have free play. And here was his sister, Julie, fatter than in 1914, laughing and crying and kissing him and trying to talk all at once, while her pleasant-faced husband, Jimmy Prout, smilingly held out a hand across her shoulder and managed to grasp one of Stacey’s fingers.

Did they really care so much as all this for him? Stacey wondered, with remorse at feeling so little himself. Or was it just the dramatic moment?

Then all at once his coolness was swept away by a gust of genuine emotion, the last he should have felt—anger and something like horror. For Julie had bent over and lifted high her five-year-old son, and the child had on a tiny khaki uniform and was saluting his uncle solemnly, fingers stiffly touching his over-seas cap.