Captain Leighton rose with difficulty from the bountifully spread table and looking about him at the kindly faces, seeing the broad, gentle humor of his host who had asked a few words from him, he said:
"You good people here at home, though you read and hear of these things and try to imagine them, can really have no adequate conception of them; of the hardships, the discomforts, the cold and the lack of sufficient rest amidst constant dangers and the almost continuous hammering of guns. And then, when in battle—well, no poor words of mine can picture it.
"You, Mr. Flynn, and you, Madam, the proud mother of this boy"—the captain stood with his hand across Roy's shoulder—"would feel a thousand times more proud if you could fully know what he went through when he lost his limb. And with a spirit like his, this loss cannot dim for one moment the usefulness of the lad in the world's activities. He will be doing his duty wherever he sets his—foot, as he did with both feet in and out of the trenches. I saw this even more plainly when we three came over, invalided home, in the good ship Ingomar.
"And now, Mr. and Mrs. Flynn, I want to call on my young friend here on my other side, as you know, your son's dearest friend, to say a few words to these charming guests who are so appreciative. Though his eyes are slightly and permanently impaired as a result of a gas attack, though he cannot again enter the ranks, the country thereby being the loser, his energies also are not diminished. Most of you know him—some of you well—Lieutenant Whitcomb."
Herbert rose slowly, awkwardly, protestingly, his face, behind the big, round, new spectacles, very red.
"I always have to thank Captain Leighton, late the captain of our company, for the kindness of his words concerning me. I have tried many times to express this to him, but talking is out of my line, as you can see. What we did over there was just all in the game; that's all. We bucked into the fortunes of war; it's a sort of accident, a sort of on-purpose accident, all the way through. It's duty first and it's all the time a concentrated Hades.
"But why always look at the dark side of this? It's going to be a better world after this war; a better understanding between nations. Everyone agrees to that. America will be the model upon which the nations will run their governments, and no people will want to fight, except for a just cause. If everybody feels like that, as the United States feels about it, why, then, nobody can make an unjust cause and wars will be over and done away with. Thank you; thanks!
"I want to say one thing more, and this is entirely personal. It concerns our host and hostess and their son, my chum. I want to thank them all, publicly, for something they have done for me. Oh, yes, Roy, old man, I will say it. While I was away over there and getting these eyes bunged up, and all that, Mr. Flynn here took it upon himself to inquire into my affairs with my guardian. It seems that instead of being a beggar, I am not quite that, and now, Mr. Flynn is my guardian. And so Roy and I, next term, go back again to dear old Brighton and take up our studies where we left off. That's the best news I can tell you about ourselves, if it interests you at all, and I know how Uncle and Aunty Flynn—that's what I call them now—feel about it. Roy can tell you far better than I could ever express it just how he and I feel about it."
Herbert sat down, still red of face, and Roy was up instantly, leaning on his crutch, but his old self seen in his round, freckled face.
"Whurrah! as me old granddad used to say over in Ireland. Eh, dad? This boy here can't talk as well as he can shoot and scrap, and so you can see what kind of a soldier he was. There was no danger he feared; no duty he shunned; no gentleness he——"