"
"Oh, no. But I--"
"We wouldn't get anywhere, probably, by arguing it," Fred said. "You
asked me."
"I asked you to tell my why he enlisted."
"The trouble is, I don't think I _can_ tell that to anybody who needs
an answer. He just went, of course. There isn't any question about it. I
always thought he'd be the first to go."
"Oh, no!" she said.
"Yes, I always thought so."
"I think you were mistaken," she said, decidedly. "It was a special
reason--to make him act so cruelly."
"Cruelly!" Fred cried.
"It _was!_"
"Cruel to whom?"
"Oh, to his mother--to his family. To have him go off that way, without
a word--"
"Oh, no' he'd been home," Fred corrected her. "He went home the Saturday
before he enlisted, and settled it with them. They're all broken up, of
course; but when the saw he'd made up his mind, they quit opposing him,
and I think they're proud of him about it, maybe, in spite of feeling
anxious. You see, his father was an artilleryman in the war with
Spain, and his grandfather was a Colonel at the end of the War of the
Rebellion, though he went into it as a private, like Ramsey.
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