“Talked yourself into it,” Driscoll observed scornfully. “But Dan, you can just put the South along with your Americans. The French laughed at the North alone, but later, when–Well, just maybe it’s a good thing we did get licked.”
Mr. Boone gasped. Sparks of indignation darted from his steel blue eyes. The recoil needed a full minute to spend itself. Then a greater horror appalled him, a horror of himself. “The Lawd help me,” he burst forth, “but you’re right, Din Driscoll! You are! It was for the best. But don’t you ever think I’m going to admit it again, to nary a living mortal soul, myself included. W’y, it would, it would knock my editorial usefulness–all to smash. There,” he added, “that’s decided, we’re going back. The colonels want their mamas. They’ve been men long enough, and they’re plum’ homesick. All the old grudges up there must be about paid off by now, so’s an ex-Reb can live in Missouri without train robbing. Libertas et natale solum–It’s our surrender, at last.”
Driscoll rose abruptly. “Lay down your pen, Shanks,” 509he said. “You’re only trying to convert the converted. Of course I’m going too. That there flag, being down here, did it. And don’t you suppose I’ve had letters from home too?”
Meagre Shanks jumped with relief. He straightened throughout his spare length. As the smell of battle to the war charger, the pungent odor of printer’s ink wet on galley proofs assailed his nostrils. There were visions, of double-leaded, unterrified thunderbolts crashing from the old Gutenberg, back in Booneville.
“Missouri,” he breathed in fire, “Missouri will sho’ly stay Democratic.”
Both men glowed. They were buoyant, happy. But these two could not so soon be quit of the enervating Land of Roses. A pair of countenances fell together. Daniel voiced their mutual thought.
“And Miss Jacqueline?” he queried boldly, with the air of meaning to persist, no matter what happened.
Driscoll showed weariness, anger.
“And Miss Burt?” he parried.
“She won’t desert, I told you once.”