"That's just like Rodney's impudence," exclaimed Tom.
"Well, you see he has a sort of good-natured contempt for me because I am not a veteran. He knows more in five minutes than I do in a month, and he is not ignorant of the fact. He and his chum sat down without waiting to be asked, talked as though they had known me always, and I laughed till I cried over the stories they told of army life. I hope to hear more of those stories when I go up to Gray's to dinner on Thursday."
If the enrolling officer had aimed a blow at him with the ebony ruler that lay on his desk Tom Randolph would not have been more dumfounded. He leaned heavily upon the back of a chair for a moment or two, and then dropped almost helplessly into it.
"To Gray's—to dinner on Thursday!" he repeated faintly. "You can't—you mustn't go there."
"What's the reason I mustn't?" demanded Captain Roach, surprised in his turn. "Good dinners are not so plenty these times that I can afford to throw them over my shoulder."
"It isn't that," replied Tom. "It's the sentiments of the people who invited you that I object to. When you go into old man Gray's house you will go plump into a nest of traitors."
"No, I reckon not. A man who volunteers and does a soldier's duty for fifteen long months, and who shows me an honorable discharge, can't well be called a traitor."
"He stayed in the army after he got there because he had to, and did a soldier's duty for the very good reason that he couldn't help himself," said Captain Tom spitefully. "But see how he talks since he came back! He says he will not go into the army again, and declares that the Yanks who captured him while he was on the way home were gentlemen."