Whereupon he turned to his coffee, sweetened with a new kind of sticky substance that tasted like an inferior grade of molasses. There were those who maintained that it was just as good as sugar for sweetening. They were liars—bold-faced liars or they had lost their sense of taste. They belonged to the same class as people who maintained that coffee was better without sugar—that so one enjoyed the taste of the native berry. One might just as well argue that flapjacks for the same reason were best without sirup; cake without frosting; bread without butter.
Carter found his breakfast spoiled for him at precisely the period in life when he was prepared most to enjoy his breakfast. This was extremely irritating. It sent him to the office every morning with a grouch that did not wear off until toward noon, when it was renewed by having to pay twice what he should for a tasteless lunch. His cigars were the only thing that held up well in flavor, and he began to smoke too many of them.
Carter still followed each day’s news of the nation’s part in the great war with honest pride. He liked the big way his country was going about its preparations. He rolled the dramatic figures over his tongue and gloated over the scale of the various projects. Six hundred millions appropriated for airplanes!
“We’ll show ’em,” he announced to Culver. “We’ll have the air over there black with planes!”
And that job at Hog Island! They were planning to build fifty ways there inside of a year—just put them down on a marshy island.
“Nothing small about your Uncle Sam,” he chuckled.
When the inevitable scandals began to be whispered and congressional investigations were started, Carter frowned.
“If these stories are true,” he declared, “the grafters ought to be lynched; if they’re not we ought to lynch the darn-fool congressmen who are interrupting the game.”
The investigations took place, changes were made, and the work went on, with the investigations soon forgotten. Nothing could check the onward movement. Pershing landed in France, and soon was followed by his men. Work on the same gigantic scale was begun on the other side. Docks were built, railroads laid down overnight, warehouses put up almost between dawn and twilight. This vanguard saw big and built big, and when the news of its accomplishment began to filter across to the men at home it made every American feel bigger.
At the close of his freshman year in June, Ben came back home, and that personal interest took the place of every other in Carter’s mind. The boy was looking fine. Drill with the Harvard regiment had taken the place of athletics and had left him as rugged and tanned as a seasoned soldier. Carter proudly took the boy to town with him on the eight-ten and introduced him to the crowd. Then he introduced him to everyone in the office, including Stetson, the second vice president. There was some design in this. He was preparing the way for an opening here for Ben as soon as the lad was through college. With the benefit of the experience Carter could give him the boy ought to climb high in the Atlas.