“Not now, Mother,” he answered. “Got to go back to the office.”
He stood for an instant looking at the faint smear of smoke above the curve in the track. Then, without another word, he strode off in the direction of Z. Snow and Co.'s buildings. Issachar Price sniffed.
“Crimus,” he whispered to Laban, as the latter passed him on the way to where Jessamine, the Snow horse, was tied, “the old man takes it cool, don't he! I kind of imagined he'd be sort of shook up by Al's goin' off to war, but he don't seem to feel it a mite.”
Keeler looked at him in wonder. Then he drew a long breath.
“Is,” he said, slowly, “it is a mighty good thing for the Seven Wise Men of Greece that they ain't alive now.”
It was Issachar's turn to stare. “Eh?” he queried. “The Seven Wise Men of Which? Good thing for 'em they ain't alive? What kind of talk's that? Why is it a good thing?”
Laban spoke over his shoulder. “Because,” he drawled, “if they was alive now they'd be so jealous of you they'd commit suicide. Yes, they would. . . . Yes, yes.”
With which enigmatical remark he left Mr. Price and turned his attention to the tethered Jessamine.
And then began a new period, a new life at the Snow place and in the office of Z. Snow and Co. Or, rather, life in the old house and at the lumber and hardware office slumped back into the groove in which it had run before the opera singer's son was summoned from the New York school to the home and into the lives of his grandparents. Three people instead of four sat down at the breakfast table and at dinner and at supper. Captain Zelotes walked alone to and from the office. Olive Snow no longer baked and iced large chocolate layer cakes because a certain inmate of her household was so fond of them. Rachel Ellis discussed Foul Play and Robert Penfold with no one. The house was emptier, more old-fashioned and behind the times, more lonely—surprisingly empty and behind the times and lonely.
The daily mails became matters of intense interest and expectation. Albert wrote regularly and of course well and entertainingly. He described the life at the camp where he and the other recruits were training, a camp vastly different from the enormous military towns built later on for housing and training the drafted men. He liked the life pretty well, he wrote, although it was hard and a fellow had precious little opportunity to be lazy. Mistakes, too, were unprofitable for the maker. Captain Lote's eye twinkled when he read that.