It was full fifteen minutes before Captain Dwight appeared, though little Jim had come bounding down the carpeted stairway all joy at seeing a face or two he well remembered, and in meeting new friends, who were unspeakably welcome because they were soldiers, American soldiers, _our_ soldiers. Father, he said, would be down in a moment. Mamma was not quite well, over-tired, perhaps, from the long drive and day at sight-seeing and shopping. Even when Dwight appeared, shaking hands most cordially, rejoicefully, with all, and, indeed, nearly embracing Sandy Ray, whom he had known since that young gentleman's babyhood, it was a disappointment to all his visitors that he seemed worried and harassed. Mrs. Dwight, he explained, had not benefited as they had hoped by the journeyings abroad, and she had just had something like a sinking spell. They would have to excuse her a while. She'd be down later. "But you, too, Sandy boy! What a tough time you must have been having! I hadn't heard of your being ill. I haven't heard anything, in fact. Your father hasn't written to me at all. What has been the matter?" And then it appeared that Sandy had been ailing for weeks on top of a not very serious wound, "wasn't at all fit," yet didn't wish to come home--had been ordered out of the Islands, in fact. And then, as it further appeared, when Dwight turned, looking for little Jim, all eagerness that Sandy should see how splendidly the lad was grown and developed since their parting in Arizona years ago, when Jimmy was just beginning to toddle about and talk, there stood the boy, his big blue eyes fixed on the pallid, solemn face of Lieutenant Ray with a look of bewilderment and trouble. Fowne of the Engineers spoke of it later to Foster, who just at that moment had seized Jimmy and swung him to his shoulder, where, instead of gleefully pounding his captor's head and laughing merrily, as of old he would have done, Jimmy was straining his violet blue eyes again, staring after Ray, whom a waiter, bearing his card, had summoned to follow him. Three or four of the laughing party at the moment had surrounded Dwight, compelling him with their chatter, so that he stood with a hand still extended toward the spot where Jimmy had been standing, and did not even see that Ray had been summoned and was gone. Question and answer were flying thick and fast, for full five minutes before, looking about him, Dwight missed his boy. Foster, finding the little fellow unresponsive, at least, had presently set him down, and then, plunging eagerly into the talk over the latest newspaper tidings of the doings of the Islands--of Otis's probable home-coming and MacArthur's succeeding to the command, of what could be looked for at Samar and Mindanao--he, too, had lost sight of the lad. "Hullo!" said Dwight, "Jimmy has taken possession of Ray. Well, that's as it should be. How was Gridley when you last saw him, Foster? And tell me about the Gillettes.