"He's come to a time of life when folks do take to their beds," returned David Swing. "Mebbe you could manage with crutches, Reuben, in a few weeks. I've been on 'em three years, since I was seventy-five. I've got to feel as if they was relations. Folks want me to ride to-morrow," he added, contemptuously, "but I'll march on them crutches to decorate them graves, or I won't march at all."
Now Jabez Trent was the youngest of the veterans; he was indeed but sixty-eight. He refrained from mentioning this fact. He felt that it was indelicate to boast of it. His jerking hand moved over toward the bed, and he laid it on Reuben's with a fine gesture.
"You'll be round—you'll be round before you know it," he shouted.
"I ain't deef," interrupted Reuben, "like the rest of you." But the palsied man, hearing not at all, shouted on:
"You always had grit, Reuben, more'n most of as. You stood more, you was under fire more, you never was afraid of anything— What's rheumatics? 'Tain't Antietam."
"Nor it ain't Bull Run," rejoined Reuben. He lifted his red nightcap from his head. "Let it ache!" he said. "It ain't Gettysburg."
"It seems to me," suggested Jabez Trent, "that Reuben he's under fire just about now. He ain't used to bein' disabled. It appears to me he's fightin' this matter the way a soldier 'd oughter— Comrades, I move he's entitled to promotion for military conduct. He'd rather than sympathy—wouldn't you, Reuben?"
"I don't feel to deserve it," muttered Reuben. "I swore to-day. Ask my wife."
"No, he didn't!" blazed Patience Oak. "He never said a thing but damn. He's getting tired, though," she added, under breath. "He ain't very well." She delicately brushed the foot of Jabez Trent with the toe of her slipper.
"I guess we'd better not set any longer," observed Jabez Trent. The three veterans rose like one soldier. Reuben felt that their visit had not been what he expected. But he could not deny that he was tired out; he wondered why. He beckoned to Jabez Trent, who, shaking and coughing, bent over him.