"No, I didn't," he confessed, "but I think you are magnifying the interest she has in Harcourt. She never mentioned his name all evening."
"But she talked all around him," answered Mrs. Sherman, "and I think she came to the conclusion before she went up-stairs that he does not measure up to your standards, and is almost sure that he does not even meet hers."
CHAPTER XI
THE END OF SEVERAL THINGS
The old Colonel was in the library, telling for the hundredth time to the small listener on his knee the story of the battle that had taken his right arm. For since Wardo had found that his father's father was in the same wild charge against the Yankees, and had fought like a tiger till a wound in the head and another in the knee sent him to the rear on a stretcher, he could not hear the story often enough. And that led to other tales of things that had happened when the two soldier-friends were schoolboys. It puzzled Wardo to find any resemblance between the mischievous boy whom the Colonel referred to as Cy Bannon, and the dignified judge whose picture hung on the wall of the Colonel's den.
"Oh, his name was Cyrus Edward then, just as yours is now," explained the Colonel when he finally understood the difficulty. "But it was too long a name for such a grasshopper of a lad. He'd have been out of sight before you could say it all. So they cut it down to Cy, just as yours is cut to Wardo."
"Will I be Judge Cywus Edwa'd Bannon then when I'm gwoed up?" asked Wardo.
The seriousness of the big innocent eyes fixed on him made the Colonel move uneasily. "Heaven knows," he muttered. "I don't. But it's to be hoped you'll take after him instead of the one next in line of succession."