“It won’t be any harder for her to stay behind than it is for me to leave. But I’ve got to get into this thing. Something inside of me is firing me to do it. She’ll bear it—somehow.”
“When are you boys going?” asked Sam.
“We’ll be leaving somewhere around the twentieth.”
“The twentieth!” exclaimed Sam. In that moment something occurred to him. “The twentieth!” he exclaimed over again. “And on the sixteenth—the old army men were going to hold their last reunion if only those two hadn’t died. Jack—!”
“Yes.”
“Why not—why not—why not have Paris give you boys a royal send-off on that night—the night of the sixteenth—a dinner for you fellows the sixteenth; a dinner for you fellows in place of the old Grand Army reunion!”
“I guess the boys would be willing,” replied Jack with a sad smile.
We printed a long piece in our little local paper about it, that night. Again the Vermont boys were going to war. Again a Fuller was to lead them. Tickets for the farewell dinner were on sale at the Metropolitan Drug-store, five dollars apiece, the proceeds to go to the Red Cross.
Bennington Battle Day came. All preparations for the greatest banquet Paris ever saw were completed. The time-worn custom of having the dinner in the rooms of Farrington Post was abandoned. The Post rooms would never hold the crowd. The dinner was to be held in the assembly hall of the new high school. That was the largest floor-space procurable in Paris.