Her point won with surprising ease, when she had feared that military form and law could not be circumvented, she leaned against the wall in reaction. For twenty-four hours she had been without sleep. The interest of her appeal for Feller had kept up her strength after the excitement of the fight for the redoubt was over. Now there seemed nothing left to do.
"No doctor who ever examined me for promotion has yet found that I wasn't flesh and blood," Lanstron remarked a little plaintively.
"Then the doctor must have kept the truth from Partow," she told him with a faint return of the teasing spirit that he knew well. "He wants only men of steel, with nerves of copper wire run by an electric battery, on his staff, I'm sure."
Lanstron laughed very humanly for an automaton.
"I'll suggest the battery to him. It might prove a labor saver," he said. "Being a little old-fashioned, he has depended on clockwork, which requires a special orderly to wind us when we fun down and nod at our desks." Then he turned solicitous. "The Gray staff will certainly give you an escort beyond the Gray lines, where you will find a place to establish yourselves comfortably."
The suggestion brought her energy back with the snap of a whip.
"No!" she declared. "We stay in our home. It's ours! No one else has any right there while our taxes are paid. Doesn't my children's oath say: 'I'll not let a burglar drive me out of my house'?"
"Isn't that coming around to my view, Marta?" he asked. "Aren't we refusing to leave the nation's house because a burglar is trying to enter?"
"Lanny, you, with all your intellect—when you know the oath as well as I—you pettifog like that! The oath says to appeal to justice and reason even after the first blow is struck. Why doesn't our premier appeal to the people of the Grays?"
"They garbled his last despatch, as it was, to suit their purpose."