"He'll be back in a few minutes. The draft registration is tomorrow. What are we going to do?"
Jeb felt as though his body were a sponge that had absorbed all the sickening heaviness extant throughout the world. There was a strong tugging within that demanded of him to cry aloud his intention to enlist, but another personality whimpered desperately, "I can't—I can't!" His own face now was drawn as the Colonel's had been; his eyes seemed filmy, and when he spoke his voice was lifeless.
"I know it is," he said.
It did not escape the Colonel that Jeb had replied directly to the thing which most concerned him. The draft was his evil fetish; second in importance came the question of what he should do, or whether Mr. Strong might return and be a witness to his disgrace—yet the Colonel even now was unwilling to call it this. Applied to any one else—yes! Treating with any one else he would doubtless have ordered him from the office. But this was the son of his old friend; the boy he had watched with pride, lo! these twenty-six years. One cannot in the batting of an eye shake off an affection so deeply grounded!
"Well, sir, I know it, too," he suddenly exclaimed. "I ask you what we are going to do!"
"I—I wish I knew," Jeb answered desperately. "I—I want to do something——"
"You've got to do something," the interruption came with uncompromising sternness.
The door opened and Mr. Strong entered.
"Hullo," he cried, with a brevity characteristic of him when hurried. "Would have been here sooner, but that plagued unit had to be got fixed."
"What unit are you talking about, Amos?" the Colonel asked, glad and sorry for the interruption.