The evening that it arrived there Sube besought his mother for a grenadier's tall fur cap.
"So you have decided to have a little company of soldiers, have you?" she asked.
"Sort of," he replied evasively.
But Mrs. Cane did not pursue the inquiry. She realized that boys love to be secretive about the most trivial matters, and turned her attention to the contriving of the grenadier's cap. This was finally accomplished to Sube's satisfaction by the coiling of a long fox boa round a form of milliner's wire. Epaulettes of gilt paper, and a pair of red flannel stripes on his intensely civilian knickerbockers completed his uniform.
CHAPTER VIII
IN THE LION'S CAGE
All things seemed to coöperate to furnish that truly funereal aspect without which no Decoration Day in a small town is complete.
In the first place Hon. E. Dalrymple Smythe of Rochester and Washington, D. C., had accepted an invitation to be the orator of the day. This was a distinct victory over Palmyra and Shortsville, which had to be content with a mere assemblyman and a more mere district attorney—persons of purely local reputation—while Tyre basked in the regal presence of a personage of national fame. Colonel Smythe's voice had occupied more newspaper space than any other east of the Mississippi River. Coughdrops and codliver oil had been named for him. Correspondence schools featured his method of making ANY man a convincing public speaker in thirty days without leaving his own fireside. He was the editor of the ten volume work, "The World's Most Flowery Orations," offered at the low introductory price for thirty days only.
At his first word women wept; at his second, men; and at his third, even the little children burst into uncontrollable sobbing. And Tyre was to have the pleasure of shedding its Decoration Day tears before this master of the lachrymal glands.