"You needn't," said Dick dryly; and then they both laughed. Hiram Sill and Frank Sacobie called on Dick at the hospital soon after ten o'clock on Sunday morning. They had come up to town the evening before. The greetings of the three friends were warm. Sacobie's pleasure at the reunion found no voice, but shone in his eyes and thrilled in the grip of his hand. Hiram Sill added words to the message of his beaming face. He expressed delighted amazement at Dick's appearance. "I couldn't quite believe it until now," he said. "Neither could you if you had seen yourself as we saw you when you were picked up. Nothing the matter with your face, except a dimple or two that you weren't born with. All your legs and arms still your own. I'd sooner see this than a letter from Washington. With your luck you'll live to command the battalion." Dick grinned. His greetings to his friends had been as boyishly impulsive and cheery as ever; yet there was something looking out through the affection in his eyes that would have puzzled his people in New Brunswick if they had seen it. There was a question in the look and a hint of anxiety and perhaps the faintest shade of the airs of a fond father, a sympathetic judge and a hopeful appraiser. Frank and Hiram recognized and accepted it without thought or question. The look was nothing more than the shadow of the habit of responsibility and command. Hiram talked about Washington and the War Office, and discussed his grapnel idea with considerable heat. Frank Sacobie took no part in that discussion and little in the general conversation. Soon after twelve o'clock all three set out in a taxicab for Jack Davenport's house. The luncheon was successful. The other guests were three women--a cousin of Jack's on the Davenport side and her two daughters. The host and Hiram Sill both conversed brilliantly. Frank was inspired to make at least five separate remarks of some half dozen words each. Dick soon let the drift of the general conversation escape him, so interested did he become in the girl on his right. Kathleen Kingston seemed to him a strange mixture of shyness and self-possession, of calmness and vivacity. The coloring of her small face was wonderfully mobile--so Dick expressed it to himself--and yet her eyes were frank, steady and unembarrassed. Her voice was curiously low and clear.