With provoking deliberation he removed his pipe from his lips saying “Gone.”
“Where has he gone?” I asked impatiently.
“Don’t know—suspect he has gone to enlist—said something about it.” And that was all I could learn—though I half suspected that uncle was keeping something back,—something he didn’t think it good for me to know.
After this I became more dissatisfied than ever, but still continued my work on the farm, expecting to have a letter from Jot. But no tidings of him came.
I constantly pestered Uncle Jim, who was made my guardian, to let me enlist. But he put me off by saying: “Time enough—wait awhile.”
Later on, uncle said to me, “I guess we shall have to sell Jack after all; I have been offered a good price for him by Colonel Walker. The interest on the mortgage is coming due this month, and I am a little short of money.”
So Jack was sold, and that made me still more discontented, and not long after I “broke out,” as Aunt Joe called it, by saying, “Uncle, I want to enlist. If I don’t enlist they will, like as not, draft me. Just think of a Stark being drafted! I am bigger than Jot, and just as good for a soldier. They will take me, and I am lonesome without Jot.”
Uncle Jim had finished his breakfast, pushed back from the table, and began smoking his pipe as was his custom after the morning meal.
I knew by his long deliberate puffs that he was thinking it over. Then with shorter puffs, he finished his smoke and I knew he had reached a decision.
“What d’ye think, Josephine? David won’t be good for anything at school or on the farm now; and it is natural for the Starks to want to serve their country when there is a war on hand. Like’s not, if we don’t give our consent he will go without it, and that would be worse for him and us too. What do you think?”