Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/354

344 hung up in the front windows of 89 Chestnut Street for Nathan! A blue star hung up by Aunt Augusta for the man whom Reba loved! She reached for the older woman's hand and pressed it hard.

"And all you in there," she murmured, nodding toward her mother's room, "knitting for him besides, sewing for him, planning little surprises for him, to put in the box we're going to send. Oh, Aunt Augusta, it's like a miracle!"

Coming home that night she saw a light shining in the parlor windows of 89 Chestnut Street, softly illuminating the red, white and blue of Nathan's flag.

"It wouldn't show evenings unless we did keep a light burning at night," Aunt Augusta briefly explained at the supper table when David had grumbled at the innovation, "so stop your fussing about it. It won't do a mite of good. One extra gas-jet burning evenings for as long as the war lasts, isn't going to put you into the poor-house, I guess, David Jerome."

After supper, Reba stole into the parlor all alone. From the parlor window, just as from her own upstairs, she could see the lights of lower-Ridgefield—the souls of the little houses, she used to make believe—softly shining in the valley. She could see, too, the stars in the sky, softly shining, out there beyond the star in the window. The souls of the little worlds below, and of the big worlds above, were gathered together as usual on this clear October evening in silent assembly. Only to-night there was a new star, there was a new soul, pricking the dark!

Later Reba wrote to her soldier: "I never glance up, night or day, as I turn in the driveway of 89 Chestnut Street, but that I see your star shining out at