Then we were silent; there was not much more we could say without touching the quick. But at last I burst out:—
"May, why wouldn't you take that money I sent you while Will was away at the war?"
"We could manage without it. It was kind of you, though. You have always been kind, Van!"
"You might have known it would make us happy to have you take it. It was only what I owed to the country, too, seeing that I was so placed I couldn't go to Cuba. I wanted then to leave everything and enlist. But it wouldn't have been fair to others. I sent some men in my place, though."
Perhaps it sounded a little like apologizing. May listened with a smile on her lips that heated me.
"You are just like that preacher!" I exclaimed. "You can see no good in folks unless it's your kind of good. Don't you believe I have got some real patriotism in me?"
"It's hard to think of Van Harrington, the new Senator, as a patriot," she laughed back. "Those men you sent to the front must have come in handy for the election!"
I turned red at her little fling about the Senatorship: my managers had worked that company I equipped for all it was worth.
"I guess there are a good many worse citizens than I am. I wanted to fight for those fellows down in Cuba. And you wouldn't let me do the little I could—help Will to take my place."