“I’ve often seen your father at the soldiers’ reunions—the youngest and finest looking man of the Old Guard, I’ve always thought.”
“He is—isn’t he?” she said thoughtfully.
“I wonder that the daughter of a soldier should take seriously all this talk about universal peace—”
“Perhaps that’s the reason—”
“Nonsense!”
“Seriously. I’ve listened by the hour to his stories of the war. When I was very young I saw only the glamour and the romance and the glory and then as I grew older I began to think of the blackened chimneys of Southern homes and feel the misery and the desolation of it all. And we began to quarrel about war.”
“Your father was in Sherman’s army, I believe?”
“Yes—he ran away from his Western home at fourteen and joined the colors. Think of it! At eighteen he was mustered out in Washington a veteran of twenty-six pitched battles. He’s only sixty-odd today with every power alert except a slight deafness—and by the way—“ she paused and smiled—“I should tell you that his hobby just now is the immigration question. Don’t mind anything silly he may say, will you?”
“Certainly not!” Vassar agreed. “I too am fighting against the invasion of this country by a foreign army—”
“Yours a dream—my father’s grievance quite real you must admit.”