Up Main Street strode Dad. And the once-firm mouth under the straggling gray mustache grew firm and set as of old, as he walked. The eyes, too, took on a less dreamy look and lost their film.
Chagrin, sobriety, martial music and hereditary war-spirit were doing their work.
Half-way along Main Street, in front of an imposing mercantile establishment, Dad halted. Tightening his lips and setting his jaw, he turned in at the open double doors. Down a long aisle he walked, looking neither to left nor to right, nor seeing the amused and knowing glances of sundry clerks he passed.
At a door marked “Private,” at the far end of the store, he paused; his knuckles raised to knock on the glass. Then he changed his mind and, opening the door, entered unbidden.
He walked with something of swagger into a pleasantly appointed office, at whose fumed-oak desk sat a dapper man of early middle-age.
The man at the desk looked up in momentary vexation at this abrupt advent. Then, recognizing his visitor, his somewhat ascetic face took on a look of patient civility.
“Good-morning, father,” he said, rising. “Is anything the matter?”
“You ask because I came into a store I used to own?” inquired the older man.
“Why, no. Of course not. You are always welcome. I only asked—”
“All right. I’m sorry I spoke as I did. I’m not quite myself to-day, and—”
He paused as he saw an expression of worry replace the patient courteous look he had come to loathe on his son’s countenance.
“No,” he went on, in response to the unasked query, “I am not drunk. It is something else that has upset me. Can—can you give me a few minutes of your time, Joe?”
Mr. Joseph Brinton glanced longingly at a pile of unfinished work on his desk; then, seating himself and motioning his father to a chair, sighed imperceptibly in regret as he said:
“Certainly, sir. Sit down. My time is always at your disposal.”
DAD seated himself on the edge of the chair and let his broad-brimmed gray hat drop to the floor at his side.
The unwonted fit of purpose that had brought him so aggressively into the sacred private office, however, had now begun slowly but noticeably to ebb. And, as ever, he felt curiously sheepish and ill at ease in the presence of this flawless son of his.
To gain new hold on his resolve, and incidentally to gain time, he switched from the theme that had brought him thither on sudden impulse.
“Is it true,” he asked, “is it true—what Jimmie was telling me—that you have enlisted?”
“Yes, sir. In the Second Company. I ought to be drilling with the rest this very minute. We start in three days. But I had a pressure of work here this morning, and Captain Scofield excused me.”
Again he glanced with polite furtiveness at his desk.
But Dad did not take the hint nor even notice the look. His face aglow, the old fellow had stretched forth his hand, half-rising eagerly from his seat.
“Joe, my boy,” he cried, gripping the slender and wholly unresponsive fingers of his son, “I’m proud ofyou! Plumb proud of you! You’ll make the fifth generation of fighting Brintons. This news does me good clear down to the ground. I was afraid you’d think business came first. I’m glad to see your Brinton blood’s red enough to make you forget work for a while and send you hustling out to fight for your country.”
The younger man smiled with gentle indulgence into his father’s flushed face.
“I’m afraid, sir,” said he, “that I can’t claim much credit for headlong patriotism. To be frank, this is going to prove one of the best strokes of business I ever did. You see, the most farseeing men believe the war will not last more than three months longer at most. It may even be over before we get to the front.”
“But—”
“But the spirit of hysterical excitement that goes under the name of patriotism has swept the whole country. Men who go to the front are acclaimed as heroes. Those who stay sanely at home suffer by comparison.
“It will be a good thing for me in this town and in the State and in the future handling of government contracts if I go on record as joining the army at this juncture.
“I am a one-year man. If the war ends earlier—as it will—many months earlier—I have influence enough, I think, to get my discharge. In any event, my patriotism will be a good thing for the firm and for my future here. Business is slack just now, and—”
“And this is your idea of serving your country!” gasped Dad. “You measure out your services to theflag as your clerks measure out velvet! You sneer at patriotism, you whose father and grandfather and great-grandfather—But, lad, you’re joking! You were always undemonstrative. You’re cloaking your act of self-sacrifice under—”
“No, sir,” said Joseph, smiling again at the veteran’s outburst. “I am quite sincere. I wish I might claim the noble intentions you try to credit me with. But claptrap is not in my line. It is useful with the public. But I don’t waste it in talking with members of my family.”
The old man stared slack-jawed at his faultlessly correct son. Then his mouth snapped shut very suddenly to choke back a flood of furious rebuke.
Joseph glanced down at his own polished nails; glanced again at the work-laden desk and then remarked:
“I think you said something had ‘upset’ you? That was the term, I think. Can I be of any use?”
“Yes,” snorted Dad. “Yes, you can. I was half-afraid to speak of it before. But I’m not now. Joe, I want to go to this war. I want to enlist.”
“Nonsense, father! You’re too old, for one thing. And besides—”
“Too old? I’m not quite fifty-five. Down South, men of sixty and seventy, and boys as young as Jimmie are already enlisting.”
“I beg, sir,” hastily interposed his son, “you won’t put such crazy notions into James’s head. Even at present he is a great worry to his mother and myselfby his incessant longing to become old enough to be a soldier. I do not mean to be harsh, sir, but we have traced that foolish ambition of his directly to his talks with you. And I must earnestly beg of you not to—”
“Good little Jimmie! The fighting spirit skipped a generation when it came to you, Joe. But Jim’s a Fighting Brinton from the top of his red head to the soles of his stubby little feet.”
“I must request, sir, that you put no more foolish notions into—”
“That’s neither here nor there, Joe,” broke in Dad, impatiently. “We can talk about Jimmie another time. I want to go to the front. I want to enlist in this war. And I mean to.”
“Pardon me, father, for bringing up an unpleasant subject, but—”
“But, you’re going to say, I was kicked out of the army and I can’t get back. That’s what I came to see you about to-day.”
“To seemeabout?” echoed Joseph. “I don’t understand!”
“You spoke awhile back of having influence,” answered Dad, with trembling eagerness. “And you have. With the State government and through that with the folks in charge down in Washington.
“I believe if you’d use your influence to get one of the Ohio congressmen to put the matter up to President Lincoln, he would reconsider my case. They say he’s a real man. He wouldn’t be too hard on a fellow who doesn’t ask anything better of him than a chance tofight in the ranks for the flag he loves. As like as not, he’d let me enlist.
“Won’t—won’t you see if you can’t pull wires to get the case put up before Lincoln, Joe? Won’t you do that?Please, son!”
He reached across and timidly stroked the other’s immaculate coat-sleeve.
“Lincoln’s a man, clear through,” he went on. “And he’s got a big heart. He’d—”
“He is a gross, apelike buffoon who is doing his best to make the Presidential office the laughing-stock of Europe with his uncouth ways and his ribald stories!” declared Joseph, with some heat. “I would not accept a favor at the hands of such a man.”
“But I would, Joe!” pleaded Dad. “And you’re all wrong about Lincoln. Honest, you are. I never met him. But I’ve read his speeches and I’ve talked with folks who know him. I guess Europe and this country, too—the kid-glove Bell-Douglas men—will change their minds about him before he’s done. Won’t you do this for me, Joe? I don’t often ask you favors. And this means such an awful lot to me.”
“I am very sorry, sir,” replied Joseph. “But it is quite out of the question. Even if I wished to lower myself by an appeal to him and if I were criminal enough to let you go to the war, any request of mine to Lincoln would be refused.
“He is a politician. And politicians have long memories. You seem to forget that I was chairman of the reception committee when Douglas spoke here in Idealalast year. My request would be refused; even if it chanced to pass the red-tape barriers and reach the President.
“Moreover, I would not do such a thing as to send an old man into the ardors of a campaign. Even such a short campaign as this, from all the surface evidence, will very likely be.”
“I am not an old man. Zach Taylor won the Mexican war when he was years older than I am. Oh, son, I want to do something for my country!” The man’s voice almost broke in his cry of appeal.
Joseph glanced critically at the pleading eyes beneath the disheveled thatch of whitening hair.
“Do you really want to do something for your country?” he asked, as though arguing with a stupid schoolboy. “Then I’ll tell you how you can best do it. I am forced to go away. I must leave my wife and son with no guardian or protector but yourself. By helping me you can help your country.
“Stay here and take care of them. That will enable me to go to my duty with a free mind and to keep my mind on the needs of the nation instead of fearing always that some trouble may befall my dear ones.”
“But,” protested Dad, “you said you looked on this just as a business venture, and—”
“I spoke lightly. As you guessed, to avoid praise for what is only my clear duty.”
“Oh, I’m glad. But—”
“If I can be at rest about my wife and James, leaving them in your care—and if I can be certain,” Joseph went on reluctantly, “that while I am away you yourself will not—will not—”
“Will not get drunk too often and disgrace you,” finished Dad. “I understand. Go on.”
“I—Marcia and I have talked it all over,” continued Joseph, visibly relieved, “and we have decided to ask you to close the cottage for the time I am away and come up to our house. A room will be ready for you there. And I shall feel much easier, leaving you in charge. You can look out for Marcia and James so much better when you are living under the same roof with them. And so we—”
Slowly Dad rose. Stooping, he picked up his hat and stood facing his son. The fire was gone from his eyes, the flush from his cheek. He looked very old.
“You’re right, Joe,” he said at last. “Dead right. It’s a way you’ve got. I see it. I was an old fool. I’m complimented that Marcia should want me at the house. Because I always felt she hated my calling there.
“I’ll do as you say. I’ll take the best care of her and Jimmie that I can. And I’ll—I’ll try not to do anything while you’re gone to make you and Marcia too much ashamed of me.
“After all, I’ve had my fighting day. Had it and smashed it. And the only way I can help now is to make it easier for my son to go to fight. I’ll put the dream aside. I’ll do what you say.”
Turning, he walked gropingly from the office and down the long aisle. His sight was suddenly dimmed.So much so that he almost collided with a well-dressed woman who had just entered the store and was walking toward the office.
The woman drew disgustedly aside from his wavering pathway and passed on toward the glass door beyond. The man had not seen her.
But as he left the store he heard one clerk say to another:
“Dad’s establishing a new record. Drunk before 11A.M.; and pretty near ran into the boss’s wife, at that.”
“I—I hope Marcia doesn’t believe I’m in that condition,” he mused remorsefully. “And just after she was so kind and forgiving as to want me to take charge of the big house while Joe’s away.”
On the square the recruits were still drilling, a crowd of idlers watching their gawky maneuvers. From the group of onlookers, as Dad emerged into the street, a small figure detached itself and darted joyously toward him.
“ISAW you go in,” hailed the boy, “and I was laying for you. I didn’t want to go in there with you because I’m not very popular with father to-day. What’s the matter, Dad? You look all done up.”
The little fellow slipped a grubby hand into his grandfather’s and looked up at him in genuine concern.
There was nothing of the Lord Fauntleroy, grandpa-lean-on-me element about Jimmie Brinton. Short enough to merit the loathed title of Runt, he was stocky and deep of chest. His hair grew in very red and very bristly formation. His face was plenteously freckled, his mouth rather large, and his eyes a palish green.
In repose his face was positively ugly. But then, neither Jimmie Brinton nor Jimmie Brinton’s face was ever long in repose. And there was an elfin charm about the unbeautiful youngster.
“I’m feeling all right, thanks, Jimmie,” returned Dad, as together they made for the square. “At least, as all right as a man can hope to when he’s taking medicine he hates and that is the only medicine due to cure him.”
“Has father been lecturing you again?”
“No. Just showing me my duty. He’s a wiseman, your father, Jimmie. Where he gets it from I don’t know. Sometimes he’s so wise it hurts. At least, it hurts foolisher folks like me. I’m coming to live at your house after Thursday.”
“I know,” said the boy with a queer constraint. “Mother told me.”
“Aren’t you glad?” asked Dad, wondering at the lad’s unusual tone.
“Yes,” said Jimmie briefly. “Of course I am. But I’m not glad for you. You’ll try not to mind too much the way mother acts, won’t you?”
“You mustn’t talk that way, son.”
“Oh, I’m not kicking at how she treats me. I like her a lot. Only she doesn’t seem to know what a brick you are. And it kind of riles me.”
“Oh, that’ll be all different now,” prophesied Dad. “She’s changed her mind about me. If she hadn’t, would she be wanting me to come up to the big house to live and to take charge of everything and look after you and her while Joe’s away, fighting for his country?”
“H-m!” observed the boy, non-committally.
“Of course she wouldn’t,” declared his grandfather. “We’ll have a good time up there, won’t we?”
“H-m!” repeated Jimmie.
“What’s the matter with you, son?” demanded the old man. “You look and act as glum as bill day. Have things been going wrong? You said something about not being popular with Joe.”
“Oh, that?” said Jimmie, eagerly seizing the chanceof escape. “That’s so. It’s nothing much. I was reading in theHeraldthis morning how Professor Garfield up at Hiram College is raising a regiment of college fellers. And I told father that when a man gets to be pretty near fifteen it’s time he was thinking of joining some such regiment as that. He talked to me more than ten minutes without stopping. And then mother took a turn at talking.
“They didn’t leave very much of me. They said I’m ungrateful and lazy and undisciplined and a lot of other things. But I wouldn’t have minded all that so much, only—”
“Only what?”
“Nothing.”
“Only they said,” supplemented Dad, “that it was I who put those notions into your head by my gas-bag yarns about the Mexican war and the way I feel about what a man owes as a duty to his country.”
“Did father tell you all that?” asked the boy quickly. “How mean of him!”
“I’ve heard it before,” evaded Dad. “And the worst of it is, it’s true.”
“It isn’t!” vehemently denied Jimmie.
“Yes, it is, son. Not that my ideas about patriotism aren’t all right. And a man who has risked his life is sure entitled to tell about those risks. But I had no right to fill your mind with ideas of war when you ought to be thinking about ciphering and grammar and—”
“What’s the use of school, anyway?” broke outJimmie. “I’ll learn more in one month at the war than I’d get in a year at school.”
“That’s where you’re mistaken, son. We both want to do big things. But the manager has cast us for little unimportant rôles. And if we’re yellow dogs we’ll sulk over those rôles and neglect ’em and do our feeble best to spoil the whole show. But if we’re the kind of chaps I think we are, Jimmie, you and I will just whirl in and play those two measly little rôles as if they were leading parts and as if the whole theater were applauding us. Sha’n’t we?”
The boy squeezed his hand encouragingly, but made no reply.
“You see,” went on Dad, “you’ve got a heap better chance than I have. You’re due to be the lead some day. And the better you play the little no-account parts that are handed out to you now, the sooner you’ll be one. But I’m getting a littler rôle each year.”
“It’s a shame!”
“Most things are. But white men grin and bear it. I was foolish enough to want to go to the war. But your father has shown me where my duty lies. So while he’s down South there, putting a new polish on the old fighting Brinton name, I’m going to make things easier for him by staying here and taking care of the folks he loves. It isn’t such a poor rôle if I can play it right.
“Look!” he broke off, pointing to the nearer of the two drilling companies in strong disfavor. “See how those fellows are doing the ‘double!’ It’s a crime.That step will shake the backbones out of them and knock out their strength and ginger in half a mile. What fool of a drillmaster is that, anyhow, not to teach them to come down on the ball of the foot when they double? They’re as flat-footed as a batch of Digger Indians. Why, down in Mexico, we could keep at the double for three miles without getting winded.”
“And didn’t the greasers who were chasing you get winded either?” asked Jimmie in ponderous innocence.
Dad pulled one of the boy’s outstanding ears with finely simulated fury, grinning broadly in spite of himself at the pert question.
“No, son,” he said. “It was the other way around. The best army will have to run sometimes. But down there, under Zach Taylor, it just happened that we did all our running forward. Even at Buena Vista, where they were five to our one.
“Lad, I’ll never forget that day while there’s a wheeze of breath left in me. We woke up in the morning after a big rain. We were all sopping and chilled. And we found the greasers had made a forced march, and that they’d hemmed us in the big hacienda where we were camped. They had us right in the hollow of their hands. Five to one. And all the advantage of position, too, do you see?
“Old Uncle Zach was sitting on a soap-box in front of his tent, trying to mow a week’s beard with a dull razor. He was barefoot, and in a pair of butternut pants and a red undershirt. Up rides a tailor’s dummy of a Mexican adjutant, under a flag of truce. Lookedas if he’d been born in a bandbox. He salutes, haughty like, and asks:
“‘Do I address El Comandante Zaccaria Taylor?’
“‘Uh-huh’ grunts Taylor, scraping away hopeless like at his stiff gray stubble.
“‘The illustrious Generalissimo Santa Anna bids me say to you,’ goes on the tailor’s dummy, ‘that you are irretrievably in his power.’
“‘All right,’ says Uncle Zach, tugging at his razor. ‘Let him come along, then, and get me, if that’s the case. I’m right here.’
“Half an hour later they charged us. It looked like a million-to-one shot, with no takers. Along toward afternoon, when we’d been fighting till we were half-dead, a staff officer said to me:
“‘Taylor’s been beaten to a standstill no less than three times to-day!’
“‘Yes,’ said I, grinning back at him; ‘but he doesn’t know it.’
“And no more he did. By night the Mexican army was smashed like a basket of eggs that have fallen under a road roller.
“That’s the whole secret, son—not to know when you’re licked. Maybe a man can put up as pretty a fight, in his own way, right here at home, as if he were riding a white horse and waving a thirty-dollar sword. I’m going to try to, anyhow.”
“If it’s good enough for you, Dad,” sighed the boy, “I guess it’s good enough for me. We’ll make a try at it, anyhow.”
“That’s the hero-talk,” approved his grandfather. “We’ll be General Jimmie and Colonel Dad. And each evening we’ll have a military conference, and report to each other the day’s victories and reverses. Let’s see if we can’t make it a line of victories as unbroken as Uncle Zach’s, down in Mexico. The crowd won’t be cheering us; but something clear down inside of us will. Shall we try?”
The boy drew himself up at attention.
“I approve your plan, colonel!” he rasped out, military fashion. “It is worthy of the man who helped Uncle Zach lick the greasers. We’re going to win out on this campaign. Take your post, sir, and report to me this evening.”
MAIN STREET was alive with bunting and with multicolored dresses. Across the thoroughfare hung banners. Flags were draped from window to window. The sidewalks were jammed with people whose attire was gay and whose faces were sad.
From the square at last came the fife-and-drum notes of “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” The Ideala Cornet Band took up the strains—half a beat behind. The waiting sidewalk crowds massed to the curb; and Ideala’s twelve policemen were sore put to it to maintain the lines.
Down Main Street, from the square, toward the river wharf where they were to embark for Columbus, marched Ideala’s two recruit companies. The uniforms were new—glaringly new—and as ill fitting as cheap government contract’s ingenuity could make them.
One hundred and ninety-four men, their muskets shouldered, their backs galled by the unwonted chafing of new haversacks, their feet already flinching from the harsh caress of loose army shoes, strode eastward between the double lines of spectators.
The men were still painfully conscious of themselves and their aspect. The art of keeping step was still new to them.
Wherefore they walked—not marched—with stiff bodies and compass legs. Such of them as might survive would march home with a mile-eating swing of leg and body, and with a gait that involved the maximum of speed to the minimum of effort. But only months of campaigning could teach them that motion.
As the foremost rank turned into Main Street a thousand waving handkerchiefs caught the sunlight. A great, ragged cheer went up. A cheer to which wet-eyed, flushed women lent a shrill treble sub-tone.
The procession had scarce covered two hundred yards when it came to a shuffling and unsteady halt.
Something blocked its path. Something that seemed to have the right of way.
Debouching from a side street, and crossing Main Street to the opposite egress, crept a hearse, dourly resplendent in its sable panoply of plume and polished glass. Behind moved a line of musty black coaches filled with folk in mourning. The single touch of color was a little half-masted American flag carried by a crape-hatted foot mourner at the extreme rear of the cortège.
For the man who went to-day to his burial was Captain Otis, commander of the first militia company that Ideala had sent forth. He had been invalided home, a bullet in his lungs, directly after the battle of Bull Run. And, two days ago, he had died.
The recruits, as, halted, they watched the gruesome counter-parade cross their line of march, lost some of the patriotically eager look their faces had worn. From the crowd on the sidewalks went up something very like a groan. Then came a ruffle of half-stifled sobs.
The funeral had rubbed a black smear across the occasion’s glitter. People all at once began to realize what war meant, and just what their husbands and fathers and sons were facing.
An old woman on the curb’s edge reached forth a timid hand and touched the shoulder of a gray-bearded recruit who had halted near her. He turned, momentarily forgetting newly acquired discipline; and they looked into each other’s time-scarred faces. Then the man shifted slightly from his place in the ranks and, as she leaned forward, kissed her.
A younger woman—brave in yellow organdy with red ribbons—at sight of the kiss broke into unrestrained weeping and threw her arms about the neck of a man in the next rank—the husband she had married but three months earlier and who was never to see their child.
In the instant a score of women had invaded the carefully aligned ranks; and the sound of strangled weeping rose clamorously to high heaven.
“Company,attention!” bellowed a right-amateurish militia captain. “Carryarms! Presentarms! Left shoulder—arms! Forrerd—march!”
The funeral had passed. Once more the fife-and-drum corps and the Ideala Cornet Band—still a half-beat at variance—struck up “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”
The invading women scuttled back to the sidewalk, crying and protesting. The two companies caught step and moved forward with their former stiff and unaccustomed stride.
And so down the street they passed, and to the wharf, where awaited the river transport that was to bear them to the recruiting camp at Columbus.
The occasion was over. Some of the crowd followed the soldiers to the river. The rest broke into oddly silent and disorganized groups and melted away.
Dad, tightening his grip on Jimmie’s hand, turned out of Main Street and set his face toward the big house on the hill—his assigned post of war duty.
Mrs. Joseph Brinton had not been in the throng on the sidewalks. She did not like crowds. They made her head ache. Nor did she believe in public exhibition of one’s feelings. So her good-by to her professionally patriotic husband had occurred behind closed doors in the big house, an hour earlier.
Dad and Jimmie had taken up a strategic position on the most promising street corner, however, and had seen everything. The old man was curiously silent as they turned away. But the boy was bubbling over with words and excitement.
“Gee, but it was great, Dad!” he exploded. “Finer’n any circus parade that ever struck this town.Only, did you hear how rottenly Hank Ebbets played the snare-drum? If I couldn’t hammer a drum better’n he does I’d learn to knit instead. I can play the drum all around any feller in that corps. And I never had a lesson, either. I just picked it up. The leader says I’m a ‘natural-born drummer.’ I wish I could be thumping a drum down South there, this minute, in a battle.”
“Insubordination, general!” reproved Dad, his voice a trifle husky. “Against our agreement. Seventeen more forbidden wishes like that and you’ll have to order yourself court-martialed.”
“I forgot. I’m sorry. Say, father looked el’gant in his uniform, didn’t he? Had it made to order. I heard a man behind us say a funny thing when father marched past. Someone said: ‘Joseph Brinton is more patriotic than I thought.’ And this other feller says: ‘Patriotic for revenue only.’ What does ‘patriotic for revenue only’ mean, Dad?”
“It means too much nowadays, son. But it doesn’t mean your father. You can bet on that. He’s a true fighting Brinton. Right down to the ground. I used to be afraid he wasn’t. But that just shows how wrong a suspicious old fool can be.”
“Wasn’t it a shame the way that horrible funeral tried to spoil the procession?” exclaimed Jimmie, off on a new tack. “What did it have to traipes across the route for, just when we were having such a good time cheering?”
“When you grow up,” said Dad, “you’ll find that’s a way funerals have—and, oftenest, funerals that go by other names.”
They had gained the hill’s summit, and had turned in at the gate of a house whose architecture in garish ugliness outdid that of nearly all its pretentious neighbors. Jimmie opened the front door without ceremony and stood aside to let Dad pass in.
“Your headquarters, colonel!” he announced proudly. “You are hereby placed in full command of the Brinton corps. Take your post.”
Dad stepped in and stood for an instant within the broad hall.
The big and overfurnished rooms filled him, as always, with a sort of awe. He had long since offered Joseph the solid, early Victorian and Georgian furniture his own mother had so prized. But Marcia, who had once lived in the metropolis of Cincinnati and was an authority on all matters of taste, had rejected the offer.
Mahogany, she declared, was hideously old fashioned, and rosewood was worse. Also, Sheraton and Hepplewhite styles had forever gone out; and no up-to-date home could afford to harbor their makers’ works.
So the antique lumber had gone in ignominy to storage, and the big house was outfitted with the most ultramodern gems of furniture from Cincinnati, Chicago, and even far-off New York.
Dad was to-day sensible, as never before, of the grandeur of his surroundings. The marble-topped center tables, the plush chairs and lambrequins, the art plaques and Rogers groups, all struck him afresh with their splendor.
He felt a vague thrill of pride that he was chosen as masterpro tem. of it all. He hoped that Stage and the rest of the Eagle’s habitués would appreciate how great a dignity was his. He had taken good care that all of them should know of his new trusteeship.
He must be seen less in their company, he reflected. The master of the big house on the hill did not belong in a barroom. His visits to the Eagle must be fewer and less protracted.
He must do nothing to shake the sudden respect and desire for his presence wherewith his daughter-in-law had so recently become imbued.
As Dad hesitated in the hallway, Jimmie behind him, just then from one of the rear rooms Marcia Brinton appeared.
Dad, as he stepped toward her, tried to inject something of chivalric protection and fatherliness into the greeting he tendered this daughter-in-law of whom he had always been more than a little afraid.
“I have not had a chance,” he began rather pompously, “to tell you in person how I appreciate the honor you have done me in choosing me to represent your home and to look after its interests and yours in Joe’s absence. Though I asked Joe to say so for me. I shall do all I can to take his place worthily as head of the house and to serve you in every way in my power.”
Mrs. Brinton made no immediate answer, but looked at the elderly and not over-neat figure before her.
Her lips were thin. So was her nose. Her alert eyes showed no traces of tears.
Presently she spoke.
“You seem to have a false idea of your position here,” she said. “I don’t know what gloss Joseph may have put on my request that you stay in this house while he is away. But I think it is always better to be honest and to have a mutual understanding in advance.”
“But I don’t understand,” faltered Dad. “I—”
“I don’t wish to hurt your feelings,” she continued. “But, as I said, it is best to be honest and above-board. I told Joseph you had better stay here, so that there would be fewer chances of your—of your doing what might pass discredit on us while he is away. And I told him there were many light bits of work by which you could make yourself useful to me and avoid the idleness that might send you into bad companionship. I hope you will not abuse my trust; or add to my annoyances in any way.”
“I—I shall try not to,” said Dad dazedly.
“And now,” added Marcia briskly, “I’ll have to ask you to get your dinner down-town to-day. My brother and his wife are dining with me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” assented the old man.
DAD lay on a bed a little too short for him and looked up wide-eyed at the rafters above his head.
The room to which Marcia had assigned him was under the eaves and had not yet been ceiled. Through its one window poured in a flood of summer moonlight.
To the old campaigner the bare quarters were not physically uncomfortable. He had slept—and slept snug—in worse beds, and indeed in no bed at all.
But his thoughts were stretching him on a couch of fire.
Now that the miserable day was over, he had time to think, time to realize. And his reflections turned him heart-sick. At times he would sink into an apathy of misery. Again a wave of angry shame would scourge him.
This was his post of responsibility, of protectorship—to be assigned to the office of unpaid servant and unwelcome hanger-on in the house of his own son! To endure weeks, perhaps months of snubs, of petty insults, of orders worse than insults. To have his cronies of the Eagle see him pottering around town on household errands such as in those days were usually performed in Ideala by negro servants.
He could hear in anticipation old Stage’s disgusting toothful chuckle.
To drink he had turned for refuge, in every crisis or bitterness, for the past fourteen years. And to drink and its nepenthe his mind now rushed. He was prompted to get up and dress and go to the Eagle. The barroom there would not be closed for another half-hour.
Then he remembered that Marcia, following her nightly custom, had locked the lower doors and had put their keys into her housewife-bag. The lower windows, too, were lock-shuttered.
There was, clearly, no egress by the ordinary route.
As difficulties arose, his thirst increased with them, and grew to a gnawing, sentient thing. And with added desire came calculation.
Before going to bed he had looked out of the window at the moonlit town below. And subconsciously he had noted the stout iron waterpipe—nearly a foot wide, including its supports—that ran transversely down the eaves, crossing just under the window and extending at the same angle to within a few feet of the ground, before turning and going directly downward.
An agile and cool-headed man might readily descend by means of this pipe. Whether or not he could return by the same route was quite another problem and one that the man’s rapidly wakening drink-lust did not trouble to take into account.
At worst he would be but anticipating a disgrace that was morally certain to come, soon or late.
Dad raised himself on his elbow. As he did so the door of his room opened and closed in utter noiselessness, and a square-shouldered little figure clad in white stood beside his bed.
“I knew I’d find you awake,” whispered Jimmie, perching on the bed’s edge. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Dad. I wanted to tell you before. But mother kept me in the room all the time the folks were here. It’s awful hard lines.”
“It can’t be helped,” said Dad, with an effort at philosophy.
“I got a hint of how it was going to be,” said the boy. “I heard mother and father talking. But I didn’t have the sand to tell you when you were so tickled at being asked here. And, anyway, I didn’t know how bad it would turn out. Mother is—”
“Mother is mother, Jim. Let’s try to remember that. She’s a good woman. She means it all for the best.”
“You told me once that Uncle Zach Taylor said the hot place was paved with the failures of folks who ‘meant it all for the best,’ Dad.”
“He never meant people like your mother, son. She does what she thinks is right. Remember we’re soldiers, you and I. And when soldiers are expecting a square meal and the commissary train gets lost they don’t whine. They just buckle their belts tighter and keep on the best they can. That’s the way it’s got to be with me for a while. It can’t be helped, and—”
“Itcanbe helped, Dad. That’s why I sneaked in here to-night. We got to hold a council of war, you and I. And I guess I’m the one with the only idea.”
“Fire away, general, but make it brief. It’s time little boys—I mean little generals—were asleep.”
“No,” contradicted Jimmie. “It’s time they woke up, if they’re going to save Colonel Brinton. Listen, Dad: how far did you tell me you tramped in one day when you went on that hunting trip last April? Twenty-two miles, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, about twenty-two. Why?”
“Tuckered out after it?”
“Not a bit. You see, I’m used to exercise. And the work I do in my garden keeps me in pretty good shape. But why—”
“Dad, you can’t stay here.”
“What? Has your mother—”
“She hasn’t said a thing. I guess there’s nothing left for her to say. She’s said about everything already. But you can’t. It will be like being in jail. You saw how it was to-day. Well, it’ll be like that to-morrow and the next day and the next day after that and all the days. And it’ll keep getting worse.”
The old man shuddered involuntarily at the prospect.
Jimmie pressed his advantage.
“There’s just one thing you got to do, colonel,” he declared, “you got to break prison.”
“To—”
“Yep. To—to absquatulate. To run away.”
“Jimmie! I—”
“Wait a second. I’m the general and this is a council of war. You got to run away. I’ve planned it all out. And I’ve planned where you’ve got to run away to.”
“Where, general?” asked Dad in mild amusement as the boy paused for dramatic effect. “To sea, or the North Pole, or—”
“To the front!”
“Don’t, son!” expostulated Dad in sharp pain. “Don’t talk that way.”
“Why not? You said you’d stay here because you thought you could be of use to mother. Well, you see what kind of use you are to her and how much she’d miss you if you were gone. Say, Dad—colonel—honest, I hate like poison to hurt your feelings by talking like that, but it’s true. So why don’t you hike out for the front? You’re crazy to go to the war. Just as I am. Only, you can do it and I can’t. No one’s got the right to stopyouor pack you back to school.”
Dad fell back on the hard pillow, again staring wide-eyed up at the bare rafters. The drink-longing had left him, driven out by a fifty-fold stronger yearning.
“To go to the front!” he muttered.
“That’s it,” encouraged Jimmie. “That’s the idea, Dad. Why don’t you?”
Dad sighed, the bright vision fading.
“I can’t, boy,” he said simply.
“Because—” began Jimmie with a queer shyness,“because you think maybe they wouldn’t take you back?”
“You’ve guessed it, son.”
Jimmie reached forward and patted the man’s cheek in rough sympathy.
“I know,” he answered. “It’s a rotten shame. But I’ve thought all that out, too. I got the idea to-night when Uncle Cephus was telling how a boy up at Cleveland ran away to the war—under another name.”
“Another name?” repeated Dad, a confused hope jumping into life within him.
“That’s it. Now the gov’ment was silly enough not to want Lieutenant-Colonel Brinton back in the army. Even as a private, most likely. But how is the gov’ment going to know you’re Lieutenant-Colonel James Brinton unless you tell ’em so? Why, there ain’t a chance in a billion you’ll run across anyone you used to know. And if you did—well, a man changes a whole lot in fourteen years. I knowIhave.”
The veteran’s mind blazed with the new thought—a plan so simple, so safe, so feasible that he marveled at his own drink-dulled brain for not sooner seizing upon it.
Details were still in a jumble; but the basic thought possessed him to the very soul.
“I read in theHerald,” went on Jimmie, his voice cracking with excitement, “that there’s a new recruiting camp at Cincinnati. Go there. It’s only forty miles. You can make it in two days easy. And thereyou won’t run into any of the home folks. They’re all enlisting at Columbus.”
Dad was sitting bolt upright in bed, his every nerve tense. Twenty years had tumbled from his suddenly straightened shoulders.
“Jimmie!” he gasped. “Jimmie! Oh, son, you’re a wonder!”
“You—you’lldoit, Dad?” cried the boy.
“Do it?” echoed Brinton. “Yes!”
The boy gave his grandfather a rapturous hug and squealed aloud in glee.
“Mother won’t be very nice about it,” he said presently, “but—”
“No,” agreed Dad, a shade of his elation ebbing. “She won’t. I hadn’t thought of that. That’ll be the only hard part of it all. Somehow, son, I’m such a rank old coward I’d rather face a dozen crazy men armed with knives than one terribly good woman armed with a righteous temper. But I’ll have to go through with it some way. I’ll speak to her the first thing in the morning.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But how—”
“Remember the night I went cat-fishing with you? Well, how do you s’pose I got out of the house? By that window just behind you. I shinned down the water-pipe. It’s dead easy.Idid it. I stumpyouto. Right this very night. It isn’t twelve o’clock yet. You could be ten miles out of town before to-morrow morning at sunrise.”
Dad was on his feet, drawing on his clothes with the careful haste of a veteran.
“I’ll do it!” he said, feeling delightfully like a runaway schoolboy. “I’ll do it, Jimmie. Oh, lad, you’re such a little brick!”
“Don’t go off half-cocked,” adjured Jimmie. “There’s something else you’ve got to think of. What name are you going to have them call you?”
“Any name will do,” said Brinton impatiently as he bent to lace his shoes. “John Smith is as good as another, I suppose.”
“Well, you s’pose wrong,” chided Jimmie. “S’pose an off’cer or one of the men says: ‘Hey, there, Smith!’ Half the time you won’t remember you’re John Smith at all, and you won’t know enough to answer. And then everybody’ll know it isn’t your own name.”
“That’s so!” laughed Brinton. “I’ll have to teach myself my new name as I go along. That’ll be the way to get aroundthat!”
“It takes an awful long time to get used to a name,” philosophized Jimmie. “Even now, when mother calls me ‘James’ I don’t always catch on, because I’m so much useder to being Jimmie.
“But I’ve thought out that, too. You’re name is Dadd. D-A-D-D. You pronounce it just the same as D-A-D. James Dadd. It ain’t as swell a name as Claude Reginald de Montmorency. But it’s safer.
“You see,” he explained, “when anyone calls you ‘James,’ then, or ‘Dadd,’ why, you’ll be so used to both names that you’ll answer to either of ’em rightstraight off without having to stop to think about it at all. That’s the idea. Do you see what I mean?”
“Jimmie,” said Dad, with heartfelt conviction, “if you had one speck more sense your brain would explode! I take off my hat to you. You’re not a wonder. You’re two wonders—even three. James Dadd it shall be.”
Fully dressed now, he paused, and, dropping his hands on his grandson’s shoulders, looked down at the ugly, earnest little face upturned to his own in the white moonshine that filtered into the room.
“My boy,” he said very tenderly, very earnestly, “the Book of Books says something about ‘out of the mouths of babes.’ And, as usual, the Book is right. For fourteen years I’ve been wandering off the path and into dirtier sloughs than you’d understand about if I were to tell you. To-night you’ve put my feet on the firm, hard road again. And, please God, they’ve strayed from it for the last time.
“I’m no hand at sermonizing, and this is no time to preach. But I’m going to make up for what I’ve lost. I’m going to make you proud of me. I’m going to serve this dear country of ours as only a man who loves her as I docanserve her. I’m going to break with the worthless sot I’ve been for fourteen years. And I’m going to win back so help me! I’m going to be a man—aman!”
He paused, his clasp tightening on his little grandson’s shoulders, the expression in his eyes as he lookeddown into the still rigidly upturned face before him softening to warmer tenderness.
“And, son, it’s you who have shown me the way. Just remember that always. And—if it turns out that I shouldn’t happen to come back, just remember it’s the cleanest, whitest way a man could wish to die. And remember, then, that it’ll some day be your turn to take the place that’s come down to you through the generations—to be a Fighting Brinton.”
His voice choked. Stooping down, he kissed the boy; then, lightly as a man of twenty, he swung over the sill and let himself down to the pipe below.
Dad halted in his long, nervous stride; turned and looked back.
He had reached the highest ground in the lowland region; the top of a low, rolling hillock. Five miles away, in the valley, lay Ideala, the town he had quitted less than an hour and a half earlier.
Under the flood of summer moonlight it lay, it’s ugly lines almost beautiful in the soft radiance.
Dad gazed long and earnestly at the town that had been his home since babyhood; the town whose foremost merchant and leading citizen he had once been; the town that had laughingly witnessed his disgrace and had for fourteen miserable years been the scene of his daily degradation.
He looked back at the place with much the feeling wherewith a released soul might view the twisted and crippled body that had so long been its prison-house.
The disgrace, the sneers, the shame, dulled by liquor—all were things of the past. Ahead—somewhere to the southward—lay a new world, a new career, a new chance under a new name. The shackles had been struck away. The convict was free.
Dad’s keen eyes traced the bulk of a big house on a rise of ground at the town’s northern end. In a room of that house a boy was lying awake, praying for the good fortune of his grandfather. A boy—the only being on earth who loved James Brinton and whom James Brinton loved.
Unwitting his own quick impulse, the man fell heavily to his knees, gripped his hands tight across his chest, and stared up into the moon-illumined sky.
“God bless him and keep him!” he muttered incoherently.
“God bless my little boy and make me halfway the man he thinks I am!”
A spasm as of physical pain seized and shook the kneeling man. The very depths were stirred.
Something to which he had long been a stranger possessed and mastered him. His eyes still upraised, the white moon glare beating upon his face, he spoke aloud—spoke as though addressing a visible friend, not an unseen God.
“You’ve lifted me out of the mire,” he breathed. “You have shown me the light after all these black years. You have given me the chance to strike for this country that You made free and great. Make my deeds thank You as my words can’t!”
The voice ceased; then continued once more, firm yet vibrant with mighty emotion:
“You have made good Your promise that ‘a little child shall lead them.’ A child has been Your instrument in starting me in the right direction. Keep me on that road, nor let my grosser self triumph over my manhood again. I offer my life to You—it is all I have to offer in atonement. Make it clean and strong as once it was. Give me the chance to lay it on Your altar as a sacrifice to liberty and patriotism. Oh, teach me to deserve the chance that has come to me this night!”
He rose to his feet, full of a strange, exalted calm. He felt that every word of his heart-wrung prayer had reached beyond the frontier of the star country overhead and to the very throne of the Hearer and Answerer.
Somewhere on that dusty, moonlit road Dad Brinton, town drunkard, was forever left behind.
And hastening blithely to his country’s service marched James Dadd, army recruit!
TEN days later an interminably long transport-train puffed out of the Cincinnati station. Its three engines were gay in polished brass and red smokestacks. All three were decked with sooty American flags.
At the station a brass band was braying and a brazen-lunged crowd was still cheering, for this was the first of the several troop-trains, bearing drafts of recruits from Cincinnati to the training-camps outside of Washington.
The day was stiflingly hot. The wooden cars were packed to overflowing. When the windows were closed the air promptly became unbreathable. When they were open a whirlwind of soft-coal embers and soot from the gaudy locomotive gushed in.
The recruits, however, were as jubilant as though they were starting on a picnic.
Singly there were choking memories of dear ones left behind, and there was perhaps dread of what might lie before. But collectively all was noisy, even boisterous, gayety.
One car, whose occupants were largely recruited from Cincinnati water-front and similar purlieus, was deafeningly rackety. Songs, cheers, catcalls, horseplay, and the more or less surreptitious circulation of flat, brown flasks were the chief components of the fun.
The officers in charge, acting on a hint from headquarters not to press too heavily the lever of discipline until the recruits should reach the training-camps, did little to suppress the jolly riot in this particular car.
Yet as the racket swelled they exchanged many uneasy looks.
They themselves were for the most part civilians, still new to martial ways and to the handling of men. Wherefore, they had gathered in the officers’ compartment at the forward end of the troop-car, where there was at least breathing room, and left the men pretty much to themselves.
A new-made militia major went through the car, glaring sternly from side to side, at a loss for the exact words wherewith to restore quiet. As he passed there was but slight lessening of the din, and as he entered the officers’ compartment the horseplay broke out afresh.
A drillmaster, ranking as first lieutenant and veteran of the Mexican War, looked up as the major entered.
“A few of those fellows need a taste of the cells or the log and chain,” hazarded the lieutenant. “And they’ll get plenty of both if they keep up this sort of thing after we reach the camps. It seems a pity we were ordered to go easy with them on the trips.”
“It’s mostly that big bargemaster who enlisted lastweek,” said the major. “You remember? The fellow you told me about—the one who smuggled a flask of whisky onto the parade-grounds and tried to drink during drill? He’s cast himself for the rôle of village cut-up. He starts the noise every time. His latest feat is to pelt one of the older men with peanut-shells. He picked out the meekest-looking, oldest man in sight, I suppose, to make the sport safer. Every shot brings a laugh and every hit a chorus of yells.”
The lieutenant glanced out of the compartment and down the length of the thronged car.
“It’s a dirty shame,” he reported as he drew back from investigating. “He’s chosen as his butt one of the finest old fellows in all the draft of recruits. A man I’ve had my eye on since the day he joined. A man with a mystery behind him, I should say.”
“Who?” asked the major, waking to mild interest at the magic word “mystery.” “The old codger the bargee is pelting? Seems a harmless, unromantic sort of fellow.”
“He joined a little over a week ago,” replied the lieutenant. “I was cranky that day, and I hated to see a gray-haired man among the rookies I was drilling, for the old ones are awkwardest and take twice as long to learn the simplest tactics as the young chaps. But he’d passed the physical exam, and had been sworn in, so I tried to make the best of it. But, as it turned out, I didn’t have to.”
“Why not?”
“I put him in an ‘awkward squad’ and started into teach the squad how to stand and how to step out. Well, the instant this old man ‘fell in’ I saw he was a soldier. I yanked him out of that awkward squad in five seconds and put him in a company. I kept on watching him. He had the tactics down to his finger-ends. I’ve used him two or three times at a pinch to help me drill awkward squads.”
“Nothing very mysterious about that, is there?” yawned the major. “I’ve read several more thrilling mystery stories by Poe and Gaboriau.”
“The mystery is this,” said the lieutenant, ignoring the elephantine sarcasm. “I can’t get him to admit he’s ever served before. He just shut up like a clam when I asked him. His name is Dadd—James Dadd. I took the bother to look up the name on the old army rolls. There’s never been such a name in the United States army. He isn’t a foreigner, either.”
“May be serving under another name,” suggested the major, whom the story did not at all interest.
“Is it probable? Nowadays men are only too anxious to be known as enlisting for the flag. And there are big chances for promotion for men who have served before. He wouldn’t be likely to miss those chances by changing his name and refusing to admit he was a veteran. No, it’s a bit mysterious. And—”
A redoubled chorus of yells from the car brought the several officers in the compartment instinctively to their feet. Crowding to the door, they peered out over each other’s shoulders into the traveling bedlam.
The humorist had just put a capstone on his achievement of wit by creeping slyly up behind the old man whom he had been bombarding with peanut-shells, and emptying the entire residue of the paper-bag’s contents down the back of his patient victim’s neck.
The exploit brought forth tumultuous applause from the uncouth crowd of onlookers near by.
Dad, who had smiled amusedly as each peanut of the earlier volleys had chanced to hit him, now laughed aloud in tolerant mirth. He had seen new-comers far more mercilessly hazed in his earlier army days. To him the rude fun was the mere animal spirit of a gathering of children, bent on larking it while out for a holiday.
And while he did not greatly enjoy the task of scraping harsh peanut-shells from between his collar and his neck, it struck him as decidedly amusing that a full-grown man like this partly drunk bargee should find joy in such foolishness and that others should deem it funny enough to send them into recurrent and boisterous guffaws.
He was glad, though, that they could laugh. It would shift their thoughts from the grief of leave-taking. He was quite willing to be the butt of their laughter so long as it served so good a purpose.
The bargee, however, was far from pleased at his victim’s tolerant attitude. He would have preferred to see the old man stamp and swear in impotent rage or mumble piteously futile threats at his tormentor.
To achieve some such end he came around in front of Dad and, hands on hips, leered down at the pleasantly smiling target of his clownish activities.
“Well, gran’pa,” said he, “ain’t you goin’ to thank me for them generous gifts I been lavishin’ so freehanded and kind on you?”
“Certainly,” agreed Dad. “Much obliged, my friend. Only you mistook the location of my mouth. It’s in front here, not at the back of my neck, as you seem to have made the mistake of thinking.”
Some one tittered at this very mild pleasantry.
The titter nettled the bargee. He desired a monopoly of laughs, and through vexation his merrymaking at once assumed a more caustic tone.
“Kind of a smart Abe, ain’t ye?” he queried. “Guess that kind o’ talk passes for funny back in the Old Men’s Home, don’t it? Or did they dig you up out of somebody’s fam’ly vault?”
“Aw, drop it, Cy!” expostulated a softer-hearted recruit across the aisle.
“That’s right,” assented the bargee. “He may be somebody’s great-great-granddaddy. Gran’ma starved him and larruped him with a broom-handle back home, so he run away to get a square feed at Uncle Sammy’s expense. Ain’t that the way of it, gran’pa?”
“Sonny,” replied Dad, still smiling and in perfect good nature, “I ran away because somebody stole my comic almanac, and I couldn’t get on without it. I missed it a lot—till I met you.”
The titter rose again, this time swelled by severalvoices. The bargee reddened as he sought to digest the dubious repartee.
Nevertheless, he essayed to answer the none too subtle gibe in like vein.
“It’s bad enough,” he grumbled, “to stand up and get shot at for thirteen dollars a month. But when we’ve got to stomach an old goat like you, along with the job, by gollies, it adds new horrors to war! You talk like you’re the same breed as old monkey-faced Abe, down there in Washington.”
The smile was wiped clean off Dad’s face now. His eyes were cold, and his mouth was set in a very straight, thin line.
“My friend,” he said with slow gravity, “you don’t realize what you are saying. So I will explain to you, if you will let me. President Abraham Lincoln is commander-in-chief of the army to which you have sworn allegiance. In speaking of your commander-in-chief as you have just done, you do not insulthim—he is too high for insults to reach him—but you insult your army, and likewise your own self-respect. You didn’t stop to think of that when you spoke, did you? I’m sure you didn’t. But you will another time.”
The bargee’s head shot forward from between his suddenly hunched shoulders. There was a menacing scowl on his low, receding brow, below which his eyes had narrowed to pinpoints that gleamed redly.
“I don’t want no lectures,” he snarled, “from any fat-headed old blowhard.” Angry, the bargee, nevertheless, rejoiced in secret that at last he had aroused his foe from his former kindly calm. “And I’ve got a right to speak my opinions as I choose to. This is a free country. Or it was till they stuck up a lantern-jawed, backwoods booby in the President’s chair. That’s some more of my opinions; how d’ye like that?”
Somebody hissed. The hiss was taken up from various parts of the car.
But at the next moment every man was on his feet; and on the instant hush that had fallen a hundred necks were craned.
With almost incalculable swiftness Dad had sprung up and faced the bargee. The latter, reading the white-fire message in the lately kind blue eyes, hesitated not the fraction of a second, but struck out instinctively.
The hamlike fist swished portentously through the air.
But the air was all it encountered. Dad, ducking the blow, ran in. Before the bargee could grapple, he was lifted bodily on high.
Down he came. Not to the floor, but to a bended knee that caught him lengthwise athwart the middle of the body. The bargee doubled, face downward, across Dad’s knee—like a jack-knife.
One iron hand on the back of his fat neck pinioned his head to the floor. With the other hand Dad smote—smote again, and yet again and again.
Wide-handed he struck and with open palm on the portion of the bargee’s anatomy which, in that position, presented the largest and, in all respects, the most convenient striking surface.
The blows of the spanking resounded like prolonged theater applause. The bargee struggled and writhed and kicked. But all in vain. The hand and arm that held him fast were as strong as they were deft.
With no shadow of annoyance on his handsome face, Dad continued to spank, while the car shook with howls of delight from a hundred throats—howls that quite downed the bargee’s lurid vocabulary.
At length Dad paused. Palm significantly upraised, he asked gently:
“President Lincoln is a great man, isn’t he?”
“Y-yes,” groaned the bargee, after a moment of hesitation.
“You’ll never forget that again?”
“No.”
“I’m glad. Get up now, and let’s be friends. Won’t you share my seat? Or—perhaps, under the circumstances, you’ll feel more comfortable to stand up for a while.”