"Why shouldn't I buy them a box of whole ones?"

"That wouldn't answer the purpose. They have three large boxes already,"
answered Pamela, as a young man appeared in a frock coat, with a silver
badge on the right lapel, "For Services Rendered." In his hand was a dusty
cardboard box, and in the box lay five damaged leaden soldiers, up-to-date
soldiers in khaki; two without heads, two armless, one who had lost both
legs.

"Those will do splendidly," said Pamela, and the young man with the silver
badge obligingly put the soldiers into my tunic pocket. It seemed to be
understood that they and I had been knocked out in the same campaign.

"Why," I asked on the way home in the taxi, "did you want the soldiers to
be broken?"

"I--I didn't," murmured Pamela, with a sigh.

"Why did Dick?" I persisted.

"The children are so dreadfully realistic now-a-days. You see, Father
objected to his breaking heads and arms off his new ones. Dick was quite
rebellious. He wanted to know what he was to do for wounded; and Alice was
more disappointed still."

"I should have thought it was too painful a notion for her," I suggested.

"Oh!" cried Pamela, with a laugh, "Alice is a Red Cross nurse, you know.
She's made a hospital out of a Noah's Ark. She only thinks of healing