"He and Bob were in Tech together, juniors. They enlisted in Boston, and they've kept pretty close tabs on each other ever since. They had their training over here in the same camps. In France, Pete got into spirals first, 'by a fluke,' as he put it; Bob was unlucky with his landings. But, some way or other, Bob seems to have beaten him to the actual fighting. Now they're in it together." And Laura smiled and then sighed, and the nimble fingers stopped work for a minute, only to speed faster than ever. "I haven't read you any of their letters, have I? Or Sid's either? (Sidney is my twin, you know. He is at Devens.) But I will. If anything, Pete's are funnier than Bob's. Both the boys have an eye to the jolly side of things. Sometimes you wouldn't think there was anything to flying but a huge lark, by the way they write. But there was one letter of Pete's (it was to Mother), written from their first training-camp in France after one of the boys' best friends had been killed. Pete was evidently feeling sober, but oh, so different from the way any one would have felt about such a thing before the war began! There was plenty of fun in the letter, too, but toward the end, Pete told about this Jim Stone's death, and he said: 'It has made us all pretty serious, but nobody's blue. Jim was a splendid fellow, and a chap can't think he has stopped as quick as all that. Mother Jess, do you remember my talking to you one Sunday after church, freshman vacation, about the things I didn't believe in? Why didn't you tell me I was a fool? You knew it then, and I know it now.' That's Pete all over. It made Mother and me very happy." Elliott felt rather ashamed to continue her probing. "Have they always lived with you," she asked, "the Fearings?" "Oh, yes, ever since I can remember. Isn't Bruce splendid? I don't know how we could have got on at all this summer without Bruce." Then Elliott gave up. If a mystery existed, either Laura didn't know of it, or she had forgotten it, or else she considered it too negligible to mention. The girl found that for some reason she did not care to ask Stannard the source of his information. Would Bruce himself prove communicative? There could be no harm in finding out. Besides, it would tease Stannard to see her talking with "that fellow," and Elliott rather enjoyed teasing Stannard. And didn't she owe him something for a dictatorial interruption? The thing would require manoeuvering. You couldn't talk to Bruce Fearing, or to any one else up here, whenever you felt like it; he was far too busy. But on the hill at sunset Elliott found her chance. "I think Aunt Jessica," she remarked, "is the most wonderful woman I've ever seen." A glow lit up Bruce's quiet gray eyes. "Mother Jess," he said, "is a miracle." "She is so terrifically busy, and yet she never seems to hurry; and she always has time to talk to you and she never acts tired." "She is, though."