hands a great deal when she talked. Aunt Claudia deplored it as
indicating too little repose. The nuns, she felt, should have
corrected the habit. But the nuns had loved Becky's descriptive hands,
poking, emphasizing, and had let her alone.

The three of them, the Judge and Becky and Dalton, went out together.
The little group which sat in the wide moonlighted space in front of
the house was dwarfed by the great trees which hung in masses of black
against the brilliant night. The white dresses of the women seemed
touched with silver.

The lemonade was delicious, and Aunt Claudia forced herself to be
gracious. Caroline Paine was gracious without an effort. She liked
Dalton. Not in the same way, perhaps, that she liked Major Prime, but
he was undoubtedly handsome, and of a world which wore lovely clothes
and did not have to count its pennies.

Major Prime had little to say. He was content to sit there in the
fragrant night and listen to the rest. A year ago he had been jolted
over rough roads in an ambulance. There had been a moon and men
groaning. There had seemed to him something sinister about that white
night with its spectral shadows, and with the trenches of the enemy
wriggling like great serpents underground. The trail of the serpent
was still over the world. He had been caught but not killed. There
was still poison in his fangs!

He spoke sharply, therefore, when Dalton said, "It was a great
adventure for a lot of fellows who went over----"

"Don't," said the Major, and sat up. "Does it matter what took them?