“And you mean to say you can’t tell the difference?”
“Well, of course this isn’t quite so tasty, but it’s a darned good substitute.”
“You’re welcome,” growled Carter.
Newell appeared astonished. Later he repeated the conversation to Manson, and concluded: “Do you know, if the beggar didn’t have a boy in the Marines I’d say he was pro-German.”
“Nonsense!” answered Manson.
“Well, he wasn’t any too keen about the Second Liberty Loan when I saw him. He only took a thousand.”
“So? I thought he’d be good for five, anyway.”
The Government was already beginning to talk about the Third Liberty Loan. Somewhat fretfully Carter read the preliminary announcements. Where was this thing going to stop, anyway? He was not any more than keeping even with the game now. And even so, he was not getting so much out of life as he had been getting before.
On top of that they sent the boy across. After an interval of silence Carter received a cable one day announcing his safe arrival at a port in France. It took the starch all out of him. It was like one of those nightmares he used to suffer when he dreamed of the boy in some great danger and was forced to stand by, dumb and paralyzed, powerless to help. It was like that exactly, only this was reality. Day by day and mile by mile this intangible merciless power called war was dragging the boy nearer and nearer his destruction. It was barbaric. It was wrong. This boy was his.
Now he was at a port in France. Until the last few years that would not have been anything to worry about. He had wished the boy to travel. France had always stood to Carter as a land of sunshine and holidays—a sort of pre-honeymoon land to the more fortunate. To-day a port in France seemed like a port in hell.