Wayne listened gravely, but did not object.  He was quiet, and, Katie thought, not well.  She suggested that working so steadily during the hot weather was not good for him.

He laughed shortly and pointed through the open door to the shops where long rows of men were working at forges—­perspiration streaming down their faces.

But instead of alluding to them he asked abruptly:  “How is she today?”

“Tired,” said Katie.  “She didn’t sleep well last night.”

Something in the way he was looking at her brought to Katie acute realization of how much she cared for Wayne.  He was her big brother.  She had always been his little sister.  They were not giving to thinking of it that way—­certainly not speaking of it—­but the tenderness of the relationship was there.  Consciousness of it came now as she seemed to read in Wayne’s look that she hurt him in withholding her confidence, in not having felt it possible to trust even him.

She broke under that look.  “Wayne dear,” she said unevenly, “I don’t deny there is something to tell.  I’d like to tell you, if I could.  If ever I can, I will.”

His reply was only to dismiss it with a curt little nod.

But Katie knew that did not necessarily mean that he was feeling curt.

She was drawn back to the open door from which she could see the long double line of men working steadily at the forges.

“What are those men doing?” she asked.

“Forging one of the parts of a rifle,” he replied.

It recalled what the man who mended the boats had said of the saddles:  that the first war those saddles would see would be the war over the manufacture of them.  Would he go so far as to say the first use for the rifles—?

Surely not.  He must have been speaking figuratively.

But something in the might of the thing—­the long lines of men at work on rifles to be used in a possible war—­made the industrial side of it seem more vital and more interesting than the military phase.  This was here.  This was real.  There was practically no military life at the Arsenal—­not military life in the sense one found it at the cavalry post.  That had made it seem, from a military standpoint, uninteresting.  But here was the real life—­over in what the women of the quarter vaguely called “the shops,” and dismissed as disposed of by the term.

Suddenly she wondered what all those men thought about God.  Whether either the hard blighting religion of Ann’s father, or the aesthetic comfortable religion of her uncle “mattered” much to them?

Were the things which “mattered” forging a religion of their own?

But just what were those things that mattered?

A young man had entered and was speaking to Wayne.  After a second’s hesitation Wayne introduced him to Katie as Mr. Ferguson, who was helping him.

He had an open, intelligent face—­this young mechanic.  He did not seem overwhelmed at being presented to Captain Jones’ sister, but merely replied pleasantly to her greeting and was turning away.