shoot your fingers off, specially when nobody is lookin', but at any rate he had a uniform on when he done it. Course, there wasn't any wars during your pa's day, so I don't know how he would have acted. He wasn't much of a feller for fightin', though—I remember that. I mean fist fightin'. I'm glad to know you don't take after your granddad. I never had any use for a coward, and that's why I'm proud to shake hands with you, my boy. There was a derned bad streak in your family back in your granddad's day, and it certainly is good to see that you have wiped it out. It don't always happen so. Yeller streaks are purty hard to wipe out. Takes more than two generations to do it as a rule. I'm happy to know you ain't gun shy."
The young man laughed. "I don't mind telling you, Mr. Brown, that I never went into action without being scared half out of my boots. But I wasn't alone in that, you see. I never knew a man over there who wasn't scared when he went over the top. He went, just the same—and that's what I call courage."
"So do I," cried Rosabel.
"Did you ever know for sure whether you got a German?" asked the intense young Caleb. "I mean—did you ever KILL one?"
"That's pretty hard to say, Cale. We never knew, you see—we fellows up in the clouds. I was in a bombing machine. I'd hate to think that we WASTED any bombs."
"Come now—all of you—off to bed," interposed Mrs. Vick. "I don't want to hear any more, Courtney. I wouldn't sleep a wink."
"Strikin' ten," said Amos, arising from his rocking-chair and turning it upside down at the back of the porch.
"Don't do that, Amos," protested old Caleb. "It'll NEVER rain if you—Why, dog-gone it, ain't you learned that it's bad luck to turn a chair bottom-side up when rain's needed? Turn it right-side up and put it right out here in front again where the rain can get at it. Nothin' tickles the weather more'n a chance to spoil something. That's right. Now we c'n go to bed. Better leave them cushions on the steps too, Rosie."
Courtney Thane went to his room—the spare-room on the second floor—and prepared to retire. The process was attended by the smoking of three cigarettes. Presently he was stretched out on the bed without even so much as a sheet over him. The heat was stifling. Not a breath of air came in through the wide-open windows. He lay awake for a long time, staring out into the night.
"So my precious granddad had a yellow streak in him, did he? And father wasn't much of a fighter either. Takes more than two generations to wipe out a yellow streak, does it? I wonder what the old boob meant by that rotten slam at my people."
CHAPTER IV—DOWD'S TAVERN
The last week in August Courtney Thane left the Vick farm and, crossing the river, took lodgings at the boarding house conducted by the Misses Dowd in the town of Windomville.
In a letter to his mother, informing her of the change, he had said:
Of course, I appreciate the fact that you are paying the bills, old dear, and out of consideration for you I dare say I ought to stick it out with the Vicks till November as we arranged. But I simply cannot stand it any longer. The old woman almost puts me to bed, the girl almost sits on my lap, the boy drives me crazy with his infernal questions about the war, and old man Brown—the one who went to school with father out in this gosh awful land of the grasshopper—he is the limit. He never lets a day go by without some slur about my grandfather or some other member of the family who existed long before I was born. Thinks he's witty. He is always nagging at me about cigarette smoking. I wish you could see the way he mishandles a cigar. As you know, I seldom smoke more than a half dozen cigarettes a day, but he swears to God I am everlastingly ruining my health, and it has got on my nerves so that if I stay on here another week I'll call the old jay so hard he'll drop dead from the shock. And, my heavens, how lonesome it is here. I almost die of homesickness. I just had to find a place where there is some one to talk to besides the cows and sheep and people who never think of anything but crops and the weather, last Sunday's sermon and Theodore Roosevelt. They are honest, but, my God, how could they be anything else? It would not be right for me to deny that I have improved a great deal in the last couple of weeks. I am beginning to feel pretty fit, and I've put on four or five pounds. Still, I'm getting sick of fresh eggs and fresh milk and their everlasting bacon—they call it side-meat—and preserves. She simply stuffs me with them. The air is wonderful, even during that awful hot spell I wrote you about. I am sure that another month or two out here—perhaps three—will put me back on my pins stronger than ever, and then I'll be in condition to go back to work. I am eager to get at it as soon as possible in order to pay back all you have put up for me during this beastly year. If I did not know you can well afford to do what you have been doing for me, mother dear, I wouldn't allow you to spend another penny on me. But you will get it all back some day, not in cash, of course—for that means nothing to you—but in the joy of knowing that it was worth while to bring your only son into the world. Now, as to this change I am going to make. I've been across the river several times and I like it over there much better than here. I think the air is better and certainly the surroundings are pleasanter. Windomville is a funny little village of five or six hundred people, about the same number of dogs (exaggeration!), and the sleepiest place you've ever imagined. Old Caleb Brown says it was laid out back in 1830 or thereabouts by the first Windom to come to these parts. It has a public school, a town hall, a motion-picture house (with last year's reels), a drug store where you can get soda water, a grain elevator, and a wonderful old log hut that was built by the very first settler, making it nearly a hundred years old. Miss Alix Crown, who owns nearly everything in sight—including the log hut—has had the latter restored and turned into the quaintest little town library you've ever seen. But you ought to see the librarian! She is a dried-up, squinty old maid of some seventy summers, and so full of Jane Austen and the Bronte women and Mrs. Southworth that she hasn't an inch of room left in her for the modern writers. Her name caps the climax. It is Alaska Spigg. Can you beat it? No one ever calls her Miss Spigg—not even the kids—nor is she ever spoken of or to as Alaska. It is always Alaska Spigg. I wish you could see her. Miss Crown is the girl I wrote you about, the one with the dime novel history back of her. She has a house on the edge of the town—a very attractive place. I have not seen her yet. She is up in Michigan—Harbor Point, I believe—but I hear she is expected home within a week or two. I am rather curious to see her. The place where I have taken a room is run by a couple of old maids named Dowd. It is really a sort of hotel. At least, you would insult them if you called it a boarding house. Their grandfather built the house and ran it as a tavern back before the Civil War. When he died his son carried on the business. And now his two daughters run the place. They have built on a couple of wings and it is really an interesting old shack. Clean as a pin, and they say the grub is good. It will be, as I said, a little more expensive living here than with the Vicks but not enough to amount to anything. The Dowds ask only fifteen dollars a week for room and board, which is cheaper than the Ritz-Carlton or the Commodore, isn't it? … Here is my new address in the Metropolis of Windomville-by-the-Crick: Dowd's Tavern, Main Street.
Her reply was prompt. She wrote from Bar Harbor, where she was spending the summer:
… perfectly silly of you, dearest, to speak of repaying me. All I possess will be yours some day, so why begrudge you a little of what should be yours now? Your dear father perhaps thought he was doing the right thing for both of us when he left everything to me during my lifetime, but I do not believe it was fair. … There will not be a great deal, of course. You understand how heavy my expenses have been. … In any case, you are in wretched health, my dear boy. Nothing must stand in the way of your complete recovery. When you are completely recovered, well and strong and eager to take up life where this cruel war cut it off, I shall be the happiest mother alive. I am sure you will have
