"The other one's a man," went on Sharon. "You remember when you was worried because he wouldn't settle down to anything? Well, you watch him from now on! He hasn't got the book knowledge, but he's got a fine outdoors education, and that's the kind we need most. Don't you see that fine look in his eye—afraid of nothing, knowing how to do most anything? His is the kind makes us a great country—outdoor boys from the little towns and farms. They're the real folks. I'm awful proud of him, though I ain't wanting that to get out on me. I been watching him since he was in short pants. He's dependable—knows how. Say, I'm glad he took to the outdoors and didn't want to dress up every day and be a clerk in a store or a bank or some place like that. Wasn't it good?"
"Wasn't it?" said Winona, bravely.
"We need this kind in war, and we'll need it even more when the war is over—when he comes back."
"When he comes back," echoed Winona. And then with an irrelevance she could not control: "I'm going to a dance with him to-night." Her own eyes were dancing strangely as she declared it.
"Good thing!" said Sharon. He looked her over shrewdly. "Seems to me you're looking younger than you ought to," he said.
Winona pouted consciously for the first time in her hitherto honest life.
"You're looking almighty girlish," added Sharon with almost a leer, and Winona suffered a fearful apprehension that her ribs were menaced by his alert thumb. She positively could not be nudged in public. She must draw the line somewhere, even if she had led him on by pouting. She stepped quickly to the door of the Elite Bootery.
"He'll come back all right," said Sharon. "Say, did I ever tell you how he got me to shootin' a good round of golf? I tried it first with the wooden bludgeons, and couldn't ever make the little round lawns under seven or eight—parties snickering their fool heads off at me. So I says I can never make the bludgeons hit right. I don't seem to do more'n harass the ball into 'em, so he says try an iron all the way. So I tried the iron utensils, and now I get on the lawn every time in good shape, I can tell you. Parties soon begun to snicker sour all at once, I want you to know. It ain't anything for me to make that course in ninety-eight or"—Sharon's conscience called aloud—"or a hundred and ten or fifteen or thereabouts, in round numbers."
"I'm so glad," said Winona.
"I give him all the credit. And"—he turned after starting on—"he'll come back—he'll come back to us!"