“He’s got a big job to do.  He’s goin’ to get it done so he can go back to that there home and find the little fire a-burning bright.  What do some of our boys do fightin’ alongside of them Frenchmen and under the French flag, when they get wounded and get a furlough?  Set around and wait to go back to fightin’?  I reckon not.  Some of ’em pack up and come four, five thousand miles just to see their folks for mebby two, three days.  And when they see them little fires to home a-burnin’ bright, why, they say:  ‘This here is what we’re fighting for.’  And they go back, askin’ God A’mighty to keep ’em facin’ straight to the front till the job is done.”

Dorothy, her chin in her hand, gazed at Bud.  She had never known him to be so intense, so earnest.

“Oh, I know it is so!” she cried.  “But what can I do?  I have only a little money in the bank, and father makes just enough to keep us comfortable.  You see, we spent such lots of money for those horrid old doctors in the East, who didn’t do me a bit of good.”

“You been doin’ your share just gettin’ well and strong, which is savin’ money.  But seein’ you asked me, you can do a whole lot if Lorry was to say anything to you about goin’.  And you know how better’n I can tell you or your daddy or anybody.”

“But Lorry must do as he thinks best.  We—­we are not engaged.”

“’Course.  And it ain’t no time for a young fella to get engaged to a gal and tie up her feelin’s and march off with her heart in his pocket.  Mebby some day she’s goin’ to want it back ag’in, when he ain’t livin’ to fetch it back to her.  I see, by the Eastern papers Torrance has been sendin’ me, that some young fellas is marryin’ just afore they go to jine the Frenchmen on the front.  Now, what are some of them gals goin’ to do if their boys don’t come back?  Or mebby come back crippled for life?  Some of them gals is goin’ to pay a mighty high price for just a few days of bein’ married.  It riles me to think of it.”

“I hadn’t thought of it—­as you do,” said Dorothy.

“Well, I hope you’ll forgive your Uncle Bud for ragin’ and rampin’ around like this.  I can’t talk what’s in my heart to folks around here.  They’re mostly narrow-gauge.  I reckon I said enough.  Let’s go look at that new saddle.”

“Isn’t it strange,” said Dorothy, “that I couldn’t talk with father like this?  He’d be nice, of course, but he would be thinking of just me.”

“I reckon he would.  And mebby some of Lorry.”

“If Lorry should ask me about his going—­”

“Just you tell him that you think one volunteer is worth four conscripts any time and any place.  And if that ain’t a hint to him they’s somethin’ wrong with his ears.”

Shoop rose and plodded out after Dorothy.  Bondsman trailed lazily behind.  Because Shoop had not picked up his hat the big dog knew that his master’s errand, whatever it was, would be brief.  Yet Bondsman followed, stopping to yawn and stretch the stiffness of age from his shaggy legs.  There was really no sense in trotting across the street with his master just to trot back again in a few minutes.  But Bondsman’s unwavering loyalty to his master’s every mood and every movement had become such a matter of course that the fine example was lost in the monotony of repetition.