"For the love of Mike, quit your babbling! Sssh!"
"Don't you shush me, gol darn it!" cried Uncle Henry, crumpling the newspaper in his hand and throwing it on the floor. The heat was affecting him. "I've kep' still long enough, an'—"
"Oh, have you?" Gilbert smiled.
"—an' I'm goin' to find out what's what!" Uncle Henry went on, as though he had not been interrupted.
"You act as though I were to blame for what's happened," his nephew said. He saw it would do no good to lose his temper.
"Well, ain't you? Why did you want to go to war in the first place? Why, why?" He pounded the arm of his chair. "That's what started it."
"Well, somebody had to go," Gilbert answered, smiling. "If some of us hadn't taken things in our hands, I don't know what would have become of Democracy!"
Uncle Henry pondered a moment. "Mebbe so. But you didn't have to go." Gilbert had risen to get a match, and his uncle's eye followed him to the mantel-piece. He spoke to the back of his head. "You could have claimed exemption if you'd wanted to, an' you know it."
"Exemption?" Gilbert repeated the word, a little angry at its utterance. This wasn't like Uncle Henry who, with all his peculiarities, had always been a patriot.
"Absolutely! You were the sole support of an invalid uncle." He waited for the truth of this remark to sink in; but Gilbert said nothing. "And on top of that," Uncle Henry went on, rapidly, when his nephew did not speak, "you were engaged in an essential industry—if you can call these rotten steaks you feed us on essential. The bones is softer than the meat." He gave a curious little laugh, thin and high.