“So you’ve always said,” interrupted Tom.

“And the way they cook tripe!  I couldn’t stomach it, could you?  And if there’s anything I am partial to it’s a good dish of tripe!  And their light beer—­like drinking froth!  And their bread—­why, it ain’t bread!  It’s chips!  ’Taint fit for civilized folks!”

“But I sort of got used to their ways,” said Tom.

“Eh? eh?” Grandfather looked at grandson quizzically, seeking the cause of such heterodoxy in a northern man.  “Say, you ain’t been falling in love?” he hazarded.  “You—­you ain’t going to bring one of them southern girls home?”

“No!” said Tom laughing.

“Well, I’m glad you ain’t, for they’re naturally light-minded.  I remember ’em well.”  He wandered on with his questions and comments.  “Is it a fact, Tom, or was you just joking when you wrote home that the soldiers took so many baths?”

“Yes, they do.”

“Well, that beats me!  It’s a wonder you didn’t all die of pneumonia!” He paused to absorb the phenomenon.  Then his half-childish mind, prompted by a random recollection, flitted to another subject which set him to giggling.  “And the little crawlers—­did they bother you much, the little crawlers?”

“The little crawlers?” repeated Tom, mystified.

“Yes.  Everybody used to get ’em just from living close together.  Had to comb ’em out and pick ’em out of your clothes.  The chase we used to call it.”

“No, grandfather, crawlers have gone out of fashion.  And no more epidemics of typhoid and dysentery either,” said Tom.

“Times have certainly changed!” grumbled Grandfather Fragini.

Interested in their own reunion, they had paid no attention to a group of Tom’s comrades near-by, sprawled around a newspaper containing the latest despatches from both capitals.  It was a group as typical as that of the Grays around Hugo Mallin’s cot; only the common voice was that of defence.

“Five million soldiers to our three million!”

“Eighty million people to our fifty million!”

“Because of the odds, they think we are bound to yield, no matter if we are in the right!”

“Let them come!” said the butcher’s son.  “If we have to go, it will be on a wave of blood.”

“And they will come some time,” said the judge’s son.  “They want our land.”

“We gain nothing if we beat them back.  War will be the ruin of business,"-said the banker’s son.

“Yes, we are prosperous now.  Let well enough alone!” said the manufacturer’s son.

“Some say it makes wages higher,” said the laborer’s son, “but I am thinking it’s a poor way of raising your pay.”

“There won’t be any war,” said the banker’s son “There can’t be without credit.  The banking interests will lot permit it.”

“There can always be war,” said the judge’s son, “always when one people determines to strike at another people—­even if it brings bankruptcy.”