She was twenty-one. She was little and slender, with a wistful, very sweet face like a miniature; big dark-blue eyes, a small mouth that tipped down a little at the indented corners, and a transparently rose and white skin. She looked a great deal younger even than she was, and her being Mrs. Ellison had amused every one, including herself, for the last year she had used the name. As she sat down at her desk again, and looked helplessly at the keen, dark young face surmounted by an officer's cap, that for very shame's sake she had not taken away from her desk, she looked like a frightened little girl. And she _was_ frightened. It had been very thrilling, if scary, to be married to Francis Ellison, when he wasn't around. The letters--the _dear_ letters!--and the watching for mails, and being frightened when there were battles, and wearing the new wedding-ring, had made her perfectly certain that when Francis came back she would be very glad, and live happily ever after. And now that he was coming she was just plain frightened, suffocatingly, abjectly scared to death. "I mustn't be!" she told herself, trying to give herself orders to feel differently. "I _must_ be very glad!" But it was impossible to do anything with herself. She continued to feel as if her execution was next week, instead of her reunion with a husband who wrote that he was looking forward to---- "If he didn't describe kissing me," shivered poor little Marjorie to herself, "so accurately!" She had met Francis just about a month before they were married. He had come to see her with her cousin, who was in the same company at Plattsburg. Her cousin was engaged to a dear friend of hers, and it had made it very nice for all four of them, because Billy and Lucille weren't war-fiances by any means. They had been engaged for a couple of years, in a more or less silent fashion, and the war had given them a chance to marry. One doesn't think so much about ways and means when the man is going to war and can send you an allotment.