colonel told me that Walter was the bravest man in the regiment. Rilla, I never realized that Walter was dead till I came back home. You don’t know how I miss him now—you folks here have got used to it in a sense—but it’s all fresh tome. Walter and I grew up together—we were chums as well as brothers—and now here, in this old valley we loved when we were children, it has come home to me that I’m not to see him again.’
“Jem is going back to College in the fall and so are Jerry and Carl. I suppose Shirley will, too. He expects to be home in July. Nan and Di will go on teaching. Faith doesn’t expect to be home before September. I suppose she will teach then, too, for she and Jem can’t be married until he gets through his course in medicine. Una Meredith has decided, I think, to take a course in Household Science at Kingsport—and Gertrude is to be married to her Major and is frankly happy about it,—‘shamelessly happy’ she says; but I think her attitude is very beautiful. They are all talking of their plans and hopes—more soberly than they used to do long ago, but still with interest, and a determination to carry on and make good in spite of lost years.
“‘We’re in a new world,’ Jem says, ‘and we've got to make it a better one than the old. That isn’t done yet, though some folks seem to think it ought to be. The job isn’t finished—it isn’t really begun. The old world is destroyed and we must build up the new one. It will be the task of years. I’ve seen enough of war to realize that we’ve got to make a world where wars can’t happen. We’ve given Prussianism its mortal wound,—but it isn’t dead yet and it isn’t confined to
