"McGuire, that was a bully story—a corking good story. I want dad to hear it. Wait, I'll get him." And he was out of the room with the door fast closed behind him before John McGuire could so much as draw a breath.
Upstairs, Daniel Burton, already in the secret, heard Keith's eager summons and came at once. For some days he had been expecting just such an urgent call from Keith's lips. He knew too much to delay. He was down the stairs and at Keith's side in an incredibly short time. Then together they pushed open the door and entered the living-room.
John McGuire was on his feet. Very plainly he was intending to go home, and at once. But Daniel Burton paid no attention to that. He came straight toward him and took his hand.
"I call this mighty good of you, McGuire," he said. "My boy here has been raving about your stories of the war until I'm fairly green with envy. Now I'm to hear a bit of them myself, he says. I wish you would tell me some of your experiences, my lad. You know a chance like this is a real god-send to us poor stay-at-homes. Now fire away! I'm ready."
But John McGuire was not ready. True, he sat down—but not until after a confused "No, no, I must go home—that is, really, they're not worth repeating—those stories." And he would not talk at all—at first.
Daniel Burton talked, however. He talked of wars in general and of the
Civil War in particular; and he told the stories of Antietam and
Gettysburg as they had been told to him by his father. Then from
Gettysburg he jumped to Flanders, and talked of aeroplanes, and
gas-masks, and tanks, and trenches, and dugouts.
Little by little then John McGuire began to talk—sometimes a whole sentence, sometimes only a word or two. But there was no fire, no enthusiasm, no impetuous rush of words that brought the very din of battle to their ears. And not once did Daniel Burton thrust his fingers into his pocket for his pencil and notebook. Yet, when it was all over, and John McGuire had gone home, Keith dropped into his chair with a happy sigh.
"It wasn't much, dad, I know," he admitted, "but it was something. It was a beginning, and a beginning is something—with John McGuire."
And it was something; for the next time Daniel Burton entered the room, John McGuire did not even start from his chair. He gave a faint smile of welcome, too, and he talked sooner, and talked more—though there was little of war talk; and for the second time Daniel Burton did not reach for his pencil.
But the third time he did. A question, a comment, a chance word—neither Keith nor his father could have told afterward what started it. They knew only that a sudden light as of a flame leaped into John McGuire's face—and he was back in the trenches of France and carrying them with him.