Page:Patriotic pieces from the Great War, Jones, 1918.djvu/79

Rh THE COST

Permission of Everybody's Magazine, New York

Six o'clock when the homeward traffic of a city is heaviest from shops and offices. The street was crowded with people who, in their rush, bumped heedlessly against each other. Some smiled. Some went with fixed faces like masks. Motor-horns and car-bells blared and clanged in a medley of impatient sound. Through it all I wove my way—a little shuttle trailing my one frail thread through the pattern of the whole.

Then I heard him bawling of the wares he sold.

"Here you are!" he cried, his mouth incredibly big and twisted. "Here you are! Buy the American colors! Red! White! Blue! The colors that never run! Be a patriot! Buy your little Service-pin! Here you are!"

I stopped before him.

"How much are the Service-pins?" I asked.

"How many stars do you want on it?" said he, plunging his hand into the bag of them strung round his neck with a strap.

"Three," I told him proudly.

He held out the pin to me—a white square rimmed with red, three blue stars on its field;