“Not with you, anyhow,” he said in an angry tone, and was very cold to me the rest of the dinner hour.
They talked about the war, but what a disapointment was mine! I had returned from my Institution of Learning full of ferver, and it was a bitter moment when I heard my father observe that he felt he could be of more use to his Native Land by making shells than by marching and carrying a gun, as he had once had milk-leg and was never the same since.
“Of course,” said my father, “Bab thinks I am a slacker. But a shell is more valuable against the Germans than a milk leg, anytime.”
I at that moment looked up and saw William looking at my father in a strange manner. To those who were not on the alert it might have apeared that he was trying not to smile, my father having a way of indulging in “quips and cranks and wanton wiles” at the table which mother does not like, as our Butlers are apt to listen to him and not fill the glasses and so on.
But if my Familey slept mentaly I did not. At once I suspected William. Being still not out, and therfore not listened to with much atention, I kept my piece and said nothing. And I saw this. William was not what he seemed.
As soon as dinner was over I went into my father’s den, where he brings home drawings and estamates, and taking his Leather Dispach case, I locked it in my closet, tying the key around my neck with a blue ribben. I then decended to the lower floor, and found Carter Brooks in the hall.
“I want to talk to you,” he said. “Have you young Turks—I mean young Patriots any guns at this camp of yours?”
“Not yet.”
“But you expect to, of course?”
I looked at him in a steady manner.