The Day of the Beast | Page 7

boys got their places back."
"Hattie Wilson!" exclaimed Lane. "Why, she was a kid in the eighth grade when I left home."
"Yes, my son. But that was nearly three years ago. And the children have sprung up like weeds. Wild weeds!"
"Well! That tousle-headed Wilson kid!" mused Lane. An uneasy conviction of having been forgotten dawned upon Lane. He remembered Blair Maynard's bitter prophecy, which he had been unable to accept.
"Anyway, Daren, are you able to work?" asked his mother.
"Sure," he replied, lying cheerfully, with a smile on his face. "Not hard work, just yet, but I can do something."
His mother did not share his enthusiasm. She went on preparing the supper.
"How do you manage to get along?" inquired Lane.
"Lord only knows," she replied, sombrely. "It has been very hard. When you left home I had only the interest on your father's life insurance. I sold the farm--"
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Lane, with a rush of boyhood memories.
"I had to," she went on. "I made that money help out for a long time. Then I--I mortgaged this place.... Things cost so terribly. And Lorna had to have so much more.... But she's just left school and gone to work. That helps."
"Lorna left school!" ejaculated Lane, incredulously. "Why, mother, she was only a child. Thirteen years old when I left! She'll miss her education. I'll send her back."
"Well, son, I doubt if you can make Lorna do anything she doesn't want to do," returned his mother. "She wanted to quit school--to earn money. Whatever she was when you left home she's grown up now. You'll not know her."
"Know Lorna! Why, mother dear, I carried Lorna's picture all through the war."
"You won't know her," returned Mrs. Lane, positively. "My boy, these years so short to you have been ages here at home. You will find your sister--different from the little girl you left. You'll find all the girls you knew changed--changed. I have given up trying to understand what's come over the world."
"How--about Helen?" inquired Lane, with strange reluctance and shyness.
"Helen who?" asked his mother.
"Helen Wrapp, of course," replied Lane, quickly in his surprise. "The girl I was engaged to when I left."
"Oh!--I had forgotten," she sighed.
"Hasn't Helen been here to see you?"
"Let me see--well, now you tax me--I think she did come once--right after you left."
"Do you--ever see her?" he asked, with slow heave of breast.
"Yes, now and then, as she rides by in an automobile. But she never sees me.... Daren, I don't know what your--your--that engagement means to you, but I must tell you--Helen Wrapp doesn't conduct herself as if she were engaged. Still, I don't know what's in the heads of girls to-day. I can only compare the present with the past."
Lane did not inquire further and his mother did not offer more comment. At the moment he heard a motor car out in front of the house, a girl's shrill voice in laughter, the slamming of a car-door--then light, quick footsteps on the porch. Lane could look from where he sat to the front door--only a few yards down the short hall. The door opened. A girl entered.
"That's Lorna," said Lane's mother. He grew aware that she bent a curious gaze upon his face.
Lane rose to his feet with his heart pounding, and a strange sense of expectancy. His little sister! Never during the endless months of drudgery, strife and conflict, and agony, had he forgotten Lorna. Not duty, nor patriotism, had forced him to enlist in the army before the draft. It had been an ideal which he imagined he shared with the millions of American boys who entered the service. Too deep ever to be spoken of! The barbarous and simian Hun, with his black record against Belgian, and French women, should never set foot on American soil.
In the lamplight Lane saw this sister throw coat and hat on the banister, come down the hall and enter the kitchen. She seemed tall, but her short skirt counteracted that effect. Her bobbed hair, curly and rebellious, of a rich brown-red color, framed a pretty face Lane surely remembered. But yet not the same! He had carried away memory of a child's face and this was a woman's. It was bright, piquant, with darkly glancing eyes, and vivid cheeks, and carmine lips.
"Oh, hot dog! if it isn't Dare!" she squealed, and with radiant look she ran into his arms.
The moment, or moments, of that meeting between brother and sister passed, leaving Lane conscious of hearty welcome and a sense of unreality. He could not at once adjust his mental faculties to an incomprehensible difference affecting everything.
They sat down to supper, and Lane, sick, dazed, weak, found eating his first meal at home as different as everything else from what he had expected. There had been no lack of warmth or