The ceremony over it was the newly arrived sergeant rather than the bride and groom who was the center of attraction and none were better pleased than Larry and Ruth to have it so.

It was a flying visit on Ted’s part.  He had managed to secure a last minute leave just before sailing from Montreal at which place he had to report the day after to-morrow.

“So let’s eat, drink, and be merry,” he finished his explanation gayly.  “But first, please, Larry, may I kiss the bride?”

“Go to it,” laughed his brother.  “I’m so hanged glad to see you Kid, I’ve half a mind to kiss you myself.”

Needing no further urging Ted availed himself of the proffered privilege and kissed the bride, not once but three times, once on each rosy cheek, and last full on her pretty mouth itself.

“There!” he announced standing off to survey her, both her hands still in his possession.  “I’ve always wanted to do that and now I’ve done it.  I feel better.”

Everybody laughed at that not because what he said was so very amusing as because their hearts were so full of joy to have the irrepressible youngest Holiday at home again after the long anxious weeks of his absence.

Under cover of the laugh he whispered in Ruth’s ear, “Gee!  But I’m glad you are all right again, sweetness.  And your Geoffrey Annersley is some peach of a cousin, I’m telling you, though I’m confoundedly glad he decided he was married to somebody else and left the coast clear for Larry.”

He squeezed her hand again, a pressure which meant more than his words as Ruth knew and then he turned to Larry.  The hands of the two brothers met and each looked into the other’s face, for once unashamed of the emotion that mastered them.  Characteristically Ted was the first to recover speech.

“Larry, dear old chap, I wish I could tell you how happy I am that it has come out so ripping right for you and Ruth.  You deserve all the luck and love in the world.  I only wish mother and dad could be here now.  Maybe they are.  I believe they must know somehow.  Dad seems awfully close to me lately especially since I’ve been in this war business.”  Then seeing Larry’s face shadow he added, “And you mustn’t worry about me, old man.  I am going to come through and it is all right anyway whatever happens.  You know yourself death isn’t so much—­not such a horrible calamity as we talk as if it were.”

“I know.  But it is horribly hard to reconcile myself to your going.  I can’t seem to make up my mind to accept it especially as you needn’t have gone.”

“Don’t let that part bother you.  The old U.S.A. will be in it herself before you know it and then I’d have gone anyway.  Nothing would have kept me.  What is the odds?  I am glad to be getting in on the front row myself.  I am going to be all right I tell you.  Going to have a bully time and when we have the Germans jolly well licked I’m coming home and find me as pretty a wife as Ruth if there is one to be found in America and marry her quick as lightning.”