Part 19 (2/2)

Neither Peter Martin nor his daughter made reply to this. There was really nothing they could say.

John was about to speak again when Captain Charlie, coming from the house with their lunch basket in his hand, announced that he was ready, and the two men started on their way.

Standing at the gate, Mary waved good-by as her brother turned to look back. Even when the automobile had finally pa.s.sed from sight she stood there, still looking in the direction it had gone.

Peter Martin watched his daughter thoughtfully.

Without speaking, Mary went slowly into the house.

Her father sat for some minutes looking toward the door through which she had pa.s.sed. At last with deliberate care he refilled his pipe. But the old workman did not, for an hour or more, resume the reading of his Sunday morning paper.

Beyond a few casual words, the two friends in the automobile seemed occupied, each with his own thoughts. Neither asked, ”Where shall we go?” or offered any suggestion for the day's outing. As if it were understood between them, John turned toward the hill country and sent the powerful machine up the long, winding grade, as if on a very definite mission. An hour's driving along the ridges and the hillsides, and they turned from the main thoroughfare into a narrow lane between two thinly wooded pastures. A mile of this seldom traveled road and John stopped his car beside the way. Here they left the automobile, and, taking the lunch basket, climbed the fence and made their way up the steep side of the hill to a clump of trees that overlooked the many miles of winding river and broad valley and shaded hills. The place was a favorite spot to which they often came for those hours of comrades.h.i.+p that are so necessary to all well-grounded and enduring friends.h.i.+ps.

”Well, _Mister_ Ward,” said Captain Charlie, when they were comfortably seated and their pipes were going well, ”how does it feel to be one of the cruel capitalist cla.s.s a-grindin' the faces off us poor?”

The workman spoke lightly, but there was something in his voice that made John look at him sharply. It was a little as though Captain Charlie were nerving himself to say good-by to his old comrade.

The new general manager smiled, but it was a rather serious smile. ”Do you remember how you felt when you received your captain's commission?”

he asked.

”I do that,” returned Charlie. ”I felt that I had been handed a mighty big job and was scared stiff for fear I wouldn't be able to make good at it.”

”Exactly,” returned John. ”And I'll never forget how _I_ felt when they stepped you up the first time and left me out. And when you had climbed on up and Captain Wheeler was killed and you received your commission, with me still stuck in the ranks--well--I never told you before but I'll say now that I was the lonesomest, grouchiest, sorest man in the whole A.E.F. It seemed to me about then that being a private was the meanest, lowest, most no-account job on earth, and I was darned near deserting and letting the Germans win the war and be hanged. I thought it would serve the Allies right if I was to let 'em get licked good and plenty just for failing to appreciate me.”

Captain Charlie laughed.

”Oh, yes, you can laugh,” said the new general manager of the Mill.

”It's darned funny _now_, but I can tell you that there wasn't much humor in it for me _then_. We had lived too close together from that first moment when we found ourselves in the same company for me to feel comfortable as a common buck private, watchin' you strut around in the gentleman officer cla.s.s, and not daring even to tell you to go to--”

”You poor old fool,” said Charlie, affectionately. ”You knew my promotion was all an accident.”

”Exactly,” returned John dryly. ”We've settled all that a hundred times.”

”And you ought to have known,” continued Captain Charlie, warmly, ”that my feeling toward you would have been no different if they had made me a general.”

”Sure, I ought to have known,” retorted John, with an air of triumph.

And then it appeared that John Ward had a very definite purpose in thus turning his comrade's mind to their army life in France. ”And you should have sense enough to understand that my promotion in the Mill is not going to make any difference in our friends.h.i.+p. Your promotion was the result of an accident, Charlie, exactly as my position in the Mill to-day is the result of an accident. Your superior officer happened to see you. I happen to be the son of Adam Ward. If I should have known _then_ that your rank would make no difference in your feeling toward me, you have got to understand _now_ that my position can make no difference in my feeling toward you.”

Charlie Martin's silence revealed how accurately John had guessed his Mill comrade's hidden thoughts.

The new manager continued, ”The thing that straightened me out on the question of our different ranks was that sc.r.a.p where Captain Charlie and Private John found themselves caught in the same sh.e.l.l hole with no one else anywhere near except friend enemy, and somebody had to do something darned quick. Do you remember our argument?”

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