The two sat in silence for a minute. Then Red spoke. With an odd twist of the mouth he pointed to an axe lying at the foot of a tree not far away. Above it, in the trunk, showed a great fresh gash, the beginning of a skilled woodsman’s work upon a tree which he means to fell.
“I began to chop down that tree,” he said, in the same queer, hoarse voice. “That’s what I’ve always done—when the pressure got too high. Then—I remembered. If I chopped it down, I might—end things. There’s no telling. Buller says my machinery’s got past the chopping point—it’s time to take to whittling. So—I’m whittling—as you see.”
“I see,” said Black. He spoke cheerfully—there was no pity in his voice. In his eyes—but Red was not looking at those.
“That’s why,” went on Red, after a minute, “I’m not going to France. They don’t need whittlers over there.”
“Do you think you’re a whittler?”
“What else?”
“You don’t look much like one—to me.”
“Don’t say that to me!” challenged Red, with a touch of the old fire. “There’s no cure for my hurt in the thought that I can keep on working—over here—until the machinery breaks down entirely—which may not be for a good while yet. I want what I want—and I can’t have it. What I can have’s no good compared with that. It may look good to you—it doesn’t to me. That’s all there is of it.”
“You don’t look like a whittler to me,” Black repeated, sturdily. “You look like a tree chopper. I can’t—and won’t—think of you any other way.... I wish you’d put up that knife!”
Red stared at him. “Make you nervous?” he questioned.