The trouble befell when David discovered he had a great-great-grandfather. With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost as pleased as was David himself, but while he was content to bask in another's glory, Miss Anthony saw in his inheritance only an incentive to achieve glory for himself.
From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from a descendant of a national hero she expected other things. She was a determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious young person. She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was disappointed. The great-great-grandfather had opened up a new horizon—had, in a way, raised the standard. She was as fond of David as always, but his tales of past wars and battles, his accounts of present banquets at which he sat shoulder to shoulder with men of whom even Burdett and Sons spoke with awe, touched her imagination.
“You shouldn't be content to just wear a button,” she urged. “If you're a Son of Washington, you ought to act like one.”
“I know I'm not worthy of you,” David sighed.
“I don't mean that, and you know I don't,” Emily replied indignantly. “It has nothing to do with me! I want you to be worthy of yourself, of your grandpa Hiram!”
“But HOW?” complained David. “What chance has a twenty-five dollar a week clerk—”
It was a year before the Spanish-American War, while the patriots of Cuba were fighting the mother country for their independence.
“If I were a Son of the Revolution,” said Emily, “I'd go to Cuba and help free it.”
“Don't talk nonsense,” cried David. “If I did that I'd lose my job, and we'd never be able to marry. Besides, what's Cuba done for me? All I know about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and it made me ill.”
“Did Lafayette talk like that?” demanded Emily. “Did he ask what have the American rebels ever done for me?”