“Well,” he replied, “rather slowly, of course—just at first, you know. But then I think if I can stick it out a while—say five or six years—I’ll be all right.”
I kept on looking at the old familiar law license, and thinking of my own. I have not seen it for years. I think my wife has it somewhere, in a tin tube with the diplomas and our marriage certificate and her father’s discharge from the army and other family charters, if it is not lost.
Then—for I felt that I should say something—I asked him how everybody was in the capital.
“I don’t get down any more,” he said; “it costs, you know.”
And then he was silent, and I did not care to look in his eyes. I noticed that the black cravat he had on was very old, and worn through in places. Also that he was actually out at the elbows, as to the right arm at least, for there, in the sleeve, was a ragged hole that showed the soiled lining of his coat. Presently the boy said:
“When you go down, tell them you saw me, won’t you?”
Of course it was presumptuous in him, but I thought of those five or six years. In that time he would learn—that and other things. Just then Judge Goodman stuck his head out of his private room.
I happened to go to the capital in May of that year. We were then at war, you will remember. I told the man who kept the cigar stand in the lobby of the St. James that I had seen the boy in the city, that he was practising law there, and wished to be remembered to his friends. I think I told him, also, that the boy was doing well, and already making a favorable impression upon many of the older and more prominent members of the bar. But the man shook his head and responded:
“Why, haven’t you heard? He’s gone to war—enlisted in the First Infantry!”