"Awh, well, if you knaws, you don't want to be told, then," snorted Mrs. Tucker, ill pleased at having her demands upon sympathy put to such sudden flight. "Though don't you think, Eve, that Adam hasn't got somethin' else to think of than sendin' love-messages and nonsense o' that sort? He's a good deal too much took up 'bout the trouble we'm all in for that.--He hoped you was all well, and keepin' yer spirits up, Joan." "Poor sawl!" sighed Joan: "I 'spects he finds that's more than he can do." "Ah, you may well say that," replied Mrs. Tucker, casting a troubled look toward her daughter's altered face. "Adam's doin' purtty much the same as you be, Joan--frettin' his insides out." "He's fretting, then?" gasped Eve, managing to get the words past the great lump which seemed to choke her further utterance. "Frettin'," repeated Mrs. Tucker with severity. "But there! why should I?" she added, as if blaming her sense of injury. "I keeps forgettin' that, compared with Joan, Eve, you'm nothin' but a stranger, as you may say; and, though I dare say I sha'n't get your thanks for saying it, still Adam could tell 'ee so well as me that fresh faces is all very well in fair weather, but in times of trouble they counts for very little aside o' they who's bin brought up from the same cradle, you may say." Eve's swelling heart could bear no more. This sense of being set aside and looked on as a stranger was a gall which of late she had been frequently called upon to endure, but to have it hinted at that Adam could share in this feeling toward her--oh, it was too much, and rising hastily she turned to run up stairs. "Now, there's no call to fly off in no tantrums, Eve," said Mrs. Tucker; "so just sit down now and listen to what else I've got to say." But Eve's outraged love could hide itself no longer: to answer Joan's mother with anything like temper was impossible, and, knowing this, her only refuge was in flight. "I don't want to hear any more you may have to say, Mrs. Tucker;" and though Eve managed to keep under the sharpness of her voice, she could not control the indignant expression of her face, which Mrs. Tucker fully appreciating, she speeded her departure by the inspiriting prediction that if Eve didn't sup sorrow by the spoonful before her hair was gray her name wasn't Ann Tucker. "Awh, don't 'ee say that," said Joan. "You'm over-crabbit with her, mother, and her only wantin' to hear some word that Adam had sent to her ownself." "But, mercy 'pon us! her must give me time to fetch my breath," exclaimed Mrs. Tucker indignantly, "and I foaced to fly off as I did for fear that Adam should forestall me and go doin' somethin' foolish!" "He ain't wantin' to come home?" said Joan hurriedly. "Iss, but he is, though. And when us see they sodgers go past I thought no other than he'd a set off then and there. As I said to un, ''Tis true you knows o' they that's gone, but how can 'ee tell how many's left behind?'"