The Amazing Interlude | Page 3

sense of victory; even,

in a way, a feeling of being part of a great purpose. He talked at such
times of the race, as one may who is doing his best by it.
"Well," he said when Sara Lee opened the door, "it's a boy. Eight
pounds. Going to be red-headed, too." He chuckled.
"A boy!" said Sara Lee. "I--don't you bring any girl babies any more?"
The doctor put down his hat and glanced at her.
"Wanted a girl, to be named for you?"
"No. It's not that. It's only--" She checked herself. He wouldn't
understand. The race required girl babies. "I've put a blue bow on my
afghan. Pink is for boys," she said, and led the way upstairs.
Very simple and orderly was the small house, as simple and orderly as
Sara Lee's days in it. Time was to come when Sara Lee, having left it,
ached for it with every fiber of her body and her soul--for its bright
curtains and fresh paint, its regularity, its shining brasses and growing
plants, its very kitchen pans and green-and-white oilcloth. She was to
ache, too, for her friends--their small engrossing cares, their kindly
interest, their familiar faces.
Time was to come, too, when she came back, not to the little house, it
is true, but to her friends, to Anna and the others. But they had not
grown and Sara Lee had. And that is the story.
Uncle James died the next day. One moment he was there, an uneasy
figure, under the tulip quilt, and the next he had gone away entirely,
leaving a terrible quiet behind him. He had been the center of the little
house, a big and cheery and not over-orderly center. Followed his going
not only quiet, but a wretched tidiness. There was nothing for Sara Lee
to do but to think.
And, in the way of mourning women, things that Uncle James had said
which had passed unheeded came back to her. One of them was when
he had proposed to adopt a Belgian child, and Aunt Harriet had offered

horrified protest.
"All right," he had said. "Of course, if you feel that way about it--! But
I feel kind of mean, sometimes, sitting here doing nothing when there's
such a lot to be done."
Then he had gone for a walk and had come back cheerful enough but
rather quiet.
There was that other time, too, when the German Army was hurling
itself, wave after wave, across the Yser--only of course Sara Lee knew
nothing of the Yser then--and when it seemed as though the attenuated
Allied line must surely crack and give. He had said then that if he were
only twenty years younger he would go across and help.
"And what about me?" Aunt Harriet had asked. "But I suppose I
wouldn't matter."
"You could go to Jennie's, couldn't you?"
There had followed one of those absurd wrangles as to whether or not
Aunt Harriet would go to Jennie's in the rather remote contingency of
Uncle James' becoming twenty years younger and going away.
And now Uncle James had taken on the wings of the morning and was
indeed gone away. And again it became a question of Jennie's. Aunt
Harriet, rather dazed at first, took to arguing it pro and con.
"Of course she has room for me," she would say in her thin voice.
"There's that little room that was Edgar's. There's nobody in it now. But
there's only room for a single bed, Sara Lee."
Sara Lee was knitting socks now, all a trifle tight as to heel. "I know,"
she would say. "I'll get along. Don't you worry about me."
Always these talks ended on a note of exasperation for Aunt Harriet.
For Sara Lee's statement that she could manage would draw forth a
plaintive burst from the older woman.

"If only you'd marry Harvey," she would say. "I don't know what's
come over you. You used to like him well enough."
"I still like him."
"I've seen you jump when the telephone bell rang. Your Uncle James
often spoke about it. He noticed more than most people thought." She
followed Sara Lee's eyes down the street to where Anna was wheeling
her baby slowly up and down. Even from that distance Sara Lee could
see the bit of pink which was the bow on her afghan. "I believe you're
afraid."
"Afraid?"
"Of having children," accused Aunt Harriet fretfully.
Sara Lee colored.
"Perhaps I am," she said; "but not the sort of thing you think. I just
don't see the use of it, that's all. Aunt Harriet, how long does it take to
become a hospital nurse?"
"Mabel Andrews was three years. It spoiled her looks too. She used to
be a right pretty girl."
"Three years,"