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90 The Hollisters' living-room unlike their neighbors', the Sherrills' and the Tillinghasts', whose sons had returned also, did not become littered with gas-masks and helmets off dead soldiers, and posters, and bits of shell and shrapnel, and the like. Vincent hadn't brought back a single relic to help make the war real for his family. The other young men had many a thrilling story to tell. Vincent had none. It was disappointing—it was more than disappointing. The slow realization that Vincent didn't want to share with his mother and father and Barbara, his sister—the three nearest people to him in the world—the details of his life in France had made it necessary for Mrs. Hollister to smother many a sigh. At the end of Vincent's first week at home she confessed to herself with chagrin that she, his own mother, knew little more of the story of his war-cross than had been printed in the newspapers for the public a month ago. He had answered all her eager questions with a brevity and curtness that left no doubt as to how unwelcome they were to him.

"It was bad enough," Barbara, the frank, complained, "the non-committal letters he used to write us, but then he had the Censor for excuse, and being busy, and now he has nothing—nothing but queerness. After all the anxiety we've