Mr. Davenport looked at his son over his gold-bowed glasses. There was a suspicious twinkle in his eyes and a twitching of the lips. There was a long pause before he spoke. This son of his had always seemed to Griffith younger than he was.
"How old are you, Roy?" he asked in a spirit of fun. "You'd make a tremendous soldier, now, wouldn't you?—just out of short clothes?"
"I'm older than Bev. was when he left college. I'm twenty. Young men make the best soldiers anyhow. I heard Governor Morton tell you that the last time he was here, and besides——"
"Tut, tut, tut, boy, you attend to your lessons! Twenty! Is that so, Katherine? Is Roy twenty?"
Griffith took his glasses in his hand and held them as if he were trying to magnify the boy in order to see him, and with his other hand tweaked his upper lip as if searching for a mustache. Roy accepted the joke and stretched himself up to his tallest, and from his inch of advantage over his father he put down a patronizing hand on Griffith's head and said, "Bless you, my children, bless you." Griffith changed the direction of his glasses and searched the ceiling with that gratified smile fathers have when they realize that a son really exceeds them in anything. Katherine was laughing at the byplay of the two. Suddenly Griffith turned to his youngest son: "Howard, how old are you? I suppose you will vote this time, and go to war and do no end of great and rash things."
"No, I'll stay at home and nurse the baby. That's the kind of a fellow I am," flung back this petulant one, and the door banged behind him.
"Don't tease Ward," said Katherine. "His temper seems to grow faster than he does just these last two years, and—"
"Highty-tighty! He'd better take a reef in it. If I'd behaved that way with my father he would have prescribed a little hickory oil. How old is Howard? Fourteen? Growing too fast by half—but his temper does seem to keep up with the rest of him, I must say. Go and hitch up the century plant, Roy. I want to drive out to the farm. Want to go'long? Don't. Well, do you, Kath'rine? No? Well, then I guess I'll have to take Margaret. She won't go back on me like that. It'll do her good and she can play with those two peewees of Miller's, while he and I look over the stock and drive about the place a little. Fan's colt was lame the last time I was out. I don't believe the strawberry patch is going to do well this year, either. Did I tell you what a fine fat calf the brindle's is? You'd laugh to see it. It winks at you exactly as if it understood a joke."
The old phaeton—otherwise the "century plant"—dashed up to the door. The combination was especially incongruous. Hitched to it was a great, gray, fiery Arabian stallion. The one-time circuit rider had not lost his love for a good horse, and his little stock farm on the outskirts of the town was the joy of his life. He sadly missed the beautiful valley of his youth, but at least these fields were his. No blue mountains loomed up in the distance, but the beech and maple trees were luxuriant. Mountain stream and narrow pass there were not, but a pebbly brook, in which were minnows, ran through the strip of woods, and Griffith still enjoyed the comradeship of bird and beast and fish. He had named the stallion Selim, after the love of his youth, and no one dared drive him but himself. He took up the lines and called back to Roy as Selim dashed off, "I'll leave Selim and bring Fannie in, so your mother and you can drive to-morrow. 'Bye, Howard! Be a good boy!" he called, as he caught a glimpse of the boy at the corner of the house.
"So'll the devil be a good boy! Just wait till that war comes! They'll see!" he growled, as the "century plant" disappeared. There floated back on the air, "Joy to the world, te, te, turn, turn. Yea, yea, there, Selim! Whoa! Yea! yea! Let earth receive her King! Te, te, turn." The "century plant" and Selim disappeared around the corner, and the fife and drum corps which had startled the horse, drowned all other sounds, and for Howard, all other thoughts. He did not stop to reach the gate. He vaulted over the fence and joined the procession and the refrain of the school-boys who gave words to the music—"on a rail! And we'll ride old Abe, and we'll ride old Abe, and we'll ride him to the White House on a rail!" The boy dropped into the step and the rhythm with a will. He forgot to be sullen.