“Yes,” she answered me softly.

“Come on, L’Aiglon; it’s time to beat it.  We are late and Sue is beginning to shoo,” called my Buzz from the door of the card room.  “We are coming home with Phil for supper to-night, Mrs. Taylor, and the Prince wants an introduction to your custard pie.  Yes’m, seven sharp!  Come on, Bob!”

“My Buzz,” I said to that Mr. Buzz Clendenning as he raced the slim car through the country and the city up to the Capitol hill, “you give to me a life of much joy in only a few days.  I would that it could so continue.”

“It just will until we are jolly old boys with long white beards and canes, Bobby,” he answered me with an affectionate grin as we rounded a corner on two wheels of the car.  “Say, let’s get out of this politics soon, go in for selling timber lands, marry two of the calicoes and found families.  We’ll call the firm Carruthers and Clendenning and I choose Sue.  You can decide about your dame later.”

Suddenly something very cold and dead was there in place of my heart that had danced with happiness.  What should I do at that time of disclosing myself as one large lie to all of these kind friends who were giving me affection on the account of my honored father and Uncle, the General Robert?  That daredevil in me had led me into this dishonor, with the excuse, it is true, of fear that the wicked Uncle would not have mended the hip of small Pierre if I did not obey his summons as a nephew.  And now I must stay to be of service to him and to the Gouverneur Faulkner but also to be more involved in that lie and to accept more confidence and affection with thievery.

“I cannot sell the lands of timber with you, my Buzz,” I made answer to him quickly and with fierceness.  “As soon as this business of the mules is settled and my Uncle, the General Robert, no longer requires my services, I must return and go into the trenches of France.”  And I felt as I spoke that my fate was decided, and a great calmness came over me.  “Then I’ll go with you,” answered me that Buzz with a look of the steadfast affection which might have grown with years of comradeship.  “I’ll go and fight for France with you if you’ll come back and build an American family alongside of mine.  Jump out—­we are fifteen minutes late—­and watch the General scalp me.  Come in through his office and take a part of it, will you?”

Even in the very short time which I had known my Uncle, the General Robert, I had discovered that the times at which could be anticipated explosions, none came, and also the reverse of that fact.  When my Buzz and I entered his office he very hastily concealed a book that had some variety of richly colored pictures in it in his desk and smiled with a wink of the eye at my Buzz.  Later I should know about that book to my great joy.

“Here’s a letter for you, Robert, and go get to your knitting with Governor Bill,” he said to me with kindness in his smile as he handed me a large letter and motioned me from the room into the small anteroom that I now knew to be the place assigned to my Buzz and me when not wanted in the offices of my Uncle, the General Robert, or the Gouverneur Faulkner.  I made a low bow to my Uncle, the General Robert, and also to Monsieur the Bumble Bee and departed thence.