“But it might, Zelotes, it MIGHT. Suppose it did, what would you say then?”
The captain regarded her over the top of the Transcript. “I shouldn't say a word, Olive,” he answered, solemnly. “I should be down sick by the time it got up as far as a thousand, and anything past two thousand you could use to buy my tombstone with. . . . There, there, Mother,” he added, noticing the hurt look on her face, “don't feel bad. I'm only jokin'. One of these days Al's goin' to make a nice, comf'table livin' sellin' lumber and hardware right here in South Harniss. I can SEE that money in the offin'. All this million or two that's comin' from poetry and such is out of sight in the fog. It may be there but—humph! well, I KNOW where Z. Snow and Co. is located.”
Olive was not entirely placated. “I must say I think you're awful discouragin' to the poor boy, Zelotes,” she said. Her husband put down his paper.
“No, no, I ain't, Mother,” he replied, earnestly. “At least I don't mean to be. Way I look at it, this poetry-makin' and writin' yarns and that sort of stuff is just part of the youngster's—er—growin' up, as you might say. Give him time he'll grow out of it, same as I cal'late he will out of this girl business, this—er—Madel—humph—er—ahem. . . . Looks like a good day to-morrow, don't it.”
He pulled up suddenly, and with considerable confusion. He had kept the news of his grandson's infatuation and engagement even from his wife. No one in South Harniss knew of it, no one except the captain. Helen Kendall knew, but she was in Boston.
Rachel Ellis picked up the half knitted Red Cross mitten in her lap. “Well, I don't know whether he's right or you are, Cap'n Lote,” she said, with a sigh, “but this I do know—I wish this awful war was over and he was back home again.”
That remark ended the conversation. Olive resumed her own knitting, seeing it but indistinctly. Her husband did not continue his newspaper reading. Instead he rose and, saying something about cal'latin' he would go for a little walk before turning in, went out into the yard.
But the war did not end, it went on; so too did the enlisting and training. In the early summer Albert came home for a two days' leave. He was broader and straighter and browner. His uniform became him and, more than ever, the eyes of South Harniss's youthful femininity, native or imported, followed him as he walked the village streets. But the glances were not returned, not in kind, that is. The new Fosdick home, although completed, was not occupied. Mrs. Fosdick had, that summer, decided that her duties as mover in goodness knows how many war work activities prevented her taking her “usual summer rest.” Instead she and Madeline occupied a rented villa at Greenwich, Connecticut, coming into town for meetings of all sorts. Captain Zelotes had his own suspicions as to whether war work alone was the cause of the Fosdicks' shunning of what was to have been their summer home, but he kept those suspicions to himself. Albert may have suspected also, but he, too, said nothing. The censored correspondence between Greenwich and the training camp traveled regularly, and South Harniss damsels looked and longed in vain. He saw them, he bowed to them, he even addressed them pleasantly and charmingly, but to him they were merely incidents in his walks to and from the post-office. In his mind's eye he saw but one, and she, alas, was not present in the flesh.
Then he returned to the camp where, later on, Captain Zelotes and Olive visited him. As they came away the captain and his grandson exchanged a few significant words.
“It is likely to be almost any time, Grandfather,” said Albert, quietly. “They are beginning to send them now, as you know by the papers, and we have had the tip that our turn will be soon. So—”