“I feel as if I were an empty shell,” he said, “and I've got to wait until nature comes along and fills up the shell again with a human being.”
“In my school in Vermont,” said Warner, “they'd call that a considerable abuse of metaphor, but all metaphors are fair in war. Besides, it's just the way I feel, too. Do you think, Dick, we'll settle down to a regular siege?”
“Knowing General Grant as we do, not from what he tells us, since he hasn't taken Pennington and you and me into his confidence as he ought to, but from our observation of his works, I should say that he would soon attack again in full force.”
“I agree with you, Knight of the Penetrating Mind, but meanwhile I'm going to enjoy myself.”
“What do you mean, George?”
“A mail has come through by means of the river, and my good father and mother—God bless 'em—have sent me what they knew I would value most, something which is at once an intellectual exercise, an entertainment, and a consolation in bereavement.”
Dick and Pennington sat up. Warner's words were earnest and portentous. Besides, they were very long, which indicated that he was not jesting.
“Go ahead, George. Show us what it is!” said Dick eagerly.
Warner drew from the inside pocket of his waist coat a worn volume which he handled lovingly.
“This,” he said, “is the algebra, with which I won the highest honors in our academy. I have missed it many and many a time since I came into this war. It is filled with the most beautiful problems, Dick, questions which will take many a good man a whole night to solve. When I think of the joyous hours I've spent over it some of the tenderest chords in my nature are touched.”