"Every cent's worth of it is her'n. There ain't a sign of a mortgage on any of it, either. It's as clear as a blank sheet of writin' paper."
"When was it you were gassed, Mr. Thane?" inquired young Caleb.
"Oh, that was when I was in the air service,—only a few weeks before the armistice."
"You left your wings at home, too, I suppose?"
"Yes. Mother likes to look at the only wings I'll probably ever have,—now or hereafter."
"How does it come, Court, that you went into the British air corpse, 'stead of in the U. S. A.?" inquired old Caleb.
"I joined the Royal Flying Corps, Mr. Brown, because the Americans wouldn't have me," replied Thane tersely. "I tried to get in, but they wouldn't pass me. Said I had a weak heart and a whole lot of rubbish like that. It's no wonder the American Air Service was punk. I went over to Toronto and they took me like a shot in the Royal British. They weren't so blamed finicky and old womanish. All they asked for in an applicant was any kind of a heart at all so long as it was with the cause. I don't suppose I ought to say it, but the American Air Service was a joke."
"I hope you ain't turning British in your feelings, Court," remarked Amos Vick. "It's purty difficult to be both, you know,—English and Yankee."
"I'm American through and through, Mr. Vick, even though I did serve under the British flag till I was gassed and invalided out."
"Affects the lungs, don't it?" inquired old Caleb.