"But oh, Magnus!" she cried, "were you so homesick as that?" "Homesick? Your blue apron is rose-colour to it." "I am glad we did not know," Cherry said with a long breath, beginning slowly to beat her cream. "You were very good not to tell." "And did nobody help you or speak to you?" questioned the two young sisters, coming up nearer to sit at his feet. "I had help enough," said Magnus, softly twanging the strings of his banjo. "Everybody from the Com. to the third-class corporals bade me brace up. And if I wanted a lonely walk in the open air on Saturday, I had only to wear my hair long and dishevelled as a sign of grief, and they'd give to me without asking. And if I dead-beat and went to the Hospital to get a chance to mope a little, Dr. Pestle would give me some compound to _make_ me sick, lest I should lose my time and be down there for nothing. The Tacs were so afraid I should 'wet my couch with briny tears' that they made me keep the old thing tight rolled up till bed time. I was too tired to cry, then." "Queer help," said Rose. "The best that could be, Rosy. They made me mad, and then I was all right." "I should call that poor comfort," said Violet. "Nothing like it, however," said Magnus. "Dries up your feelings quicker than fourteen pocket-handkerchiefs. You owe the world one, and you mean to live till you pay it. So suicide can wait." "Magnus, I wish you would not talk so," Cherry said appealingly. "Now there is Cerise," Magnus went on. "If I could once make her thoroughly angry with me, she wouldn't mind anything else that happened. The thing is how. I haven't found out yet." "And you never will," said Rose. "You cannot do it." "I cannot, hey? That is good to know. Gives me great freedom of action. I'll store up the information for future use." "What makes you call her Cerise?" said Rose. "Practising my French. Of course I never thought of her in common English when I was away." "Cherry, he cannot be with you five minutes without beginning to tease," said the girls, laughing. "He is the very same boy he always was." "I think he has made good progress in the art of telling fibs," said Cherry in turn. "Fibs!" Magnus repeated, with much unworded scorn. "You'll see about that. I mean to tell the truth while I am home now, if I never do again." And with the most funny, rollicking tone Mr. Kindred caught up his banjo and dashed off into "The Girl I Left Behind Me"; rattling it out, throwing in recitative here and there, and putting such spirit and vim into the performance that now the girls all laughed till they nearly cried again; but this time Cherry kept her eyes on her cream. Then quick and easily as the band had done, Magnus dropped once more into the plaintive burden of: "Home, home; sweet, sweet home; There is no place like home,-- There is no place like home."