THE HERO AND TIN SOLDIERS





On December twenty-fifth, 1918, that little white house in the park
was certainly the happiest dwelling in Calvinton. It was simply
running over with Christmas.

You see, there had come to it a most wonderful present, a surprise
full of tears and laughter. Captain Walter Mayne reached home on
Christmas Eve.

For a while they had thought that he would never come back at all.
News had been received that he was grievously wounded in France--shot
to pieces, in effect, leading his men near Chateau-Thierry. His
life hung on the ragged edge of those wounds. But his wife Katharine
always believed that he would pull through. So he did. But he was
lacking a leg, his right arm was knocked out of commission for the
present, and various other _souvenirs de la grande guerre_
were inscribed upon his body.

Then word arrived that he was coming on a transport, with other
wounded, to be patched up in a hospital on Staten Island. So his
wife Katharine smiled her way through innumerable entanglements
of red tape and went to nurse him. Then she set her steady hand to
pull all the wires necessary to get him discharged and sent home.