A neat paragraph to that effect appeared in _The Springhaven Chronicle_, a local sheet that offered scant news items and fat platitudes at an ever-increasing rate to a gullible and conceited populace, who supported it because it was really the only way to know what one’s neighbors were doing. The paragraph was the reluctant work of Mary Amber, the young girl who lived next door to Miss Marilla and had been her devoted friend since the age of four, when Miss Marilla used to bake sugar cookies for her in the form of stogy men with currant eyes and outstretched arms.
Mary Amber remembered Nephew Dick as a young imp of nine who made a whole long, beautiful summer ugly with his torments. She also knew that the neighbors all round about had memories of that summer when Dick’s parents went on a Western trip and left him with his Aunt Marilla. Mary Amber shrank from exposing her dear friend to the criticisms of such of the readers of _The Springhaven Chronicle_ as had memories of their cats tortured, their chickens chased, their flower-beds trampled, their children bullied, and their windows broken by the youthful Dick.
But time had softened the memories of that fateful summer in Miss Marilla’s mind, and, besides, she was sorely in need of a hero. Mary Amber had not the heart to refuse to write the paragraph, but she made it as conservative as the circumstances allowed.
But now, at last, among the latest to be sent back, Lieutenant Richard Chadwick’s division was coming home!
Miss Marilla read in the paper what day they would sail, and that they were expected to arrive not later than the twenty-ninth; and, as she read, she conceived a wild and daring plan. Why should not she have a real, live hero herself? A bit belated, of course, but all the more distinguished for that. And why should not Mary Amber have a whole devoted soldier boy of her own for the village to see and admire? Not that she told Mary Amber that, oh, no! But in her mind’s vision she saw herself, Mary Amber, and Dick all going together to church on Sunday morning, the bars on his uniform gleaming like the light in Mary Amber’s hazel eyes. Miss Marilla had one sudden pang of fear when she thought that perhaps he would not wear his uniform home, now that everybody else was in citizen’s clothing; then her sweet faith in the wholesomeness of all things came to her rescue, and she smiled in relief. Of course he would wear it to come home; that would be too outrageous not to, when he had been a hero. Of course he would wear it the first few days. And that was a good reason why she must invite him at once to visit her instead of waiting until he had been to his home and been demobilized. She _must_ have him in his uniform. She wanted the glory of it for her own brief share in that great time of uplifting and sacrifice that was so fast going into history.