“Yes,” he said, “I’d like to talk about it.  I have a big idea, and I can’t put it on paper.”

He hugged his knees and talked.  His young voice thrilled with the majesty of his conception.  Here, he said, was the idea.  Once upon a time there had been a race of wonderful swans, with plumage so white that when they rested in flocks on the river banks they made a blanket of snow.  Their night was a marvellous thing—­they flew so high that the eye of man could not see them—­but the sound of their trumpets could be heard.  The years passed and the swans came no more to their old haunts.  Men had hunted them and killed them—­but there were those who held that on still nights they could be heard—­sounding their trumpets——­

“I want to link that up with the A. E. F. We were like the swans—­a white company which flew to France——­ Our idealism was the song which we sounded high up.  And the world listened—­and caught the sound——­ And now, as a body we are extinct, but if men will listen, they may still hear our trumpets—­sounding——!”

As he spoke the air seemed to throb with the passion of his phrases.  His face was uplifted to the sky.  The Major remembered a picture in the corridor of the Library of Congress—­the Boy of Winander——­ Oh, the boys of the world—­those wonderful boys who had been drawn out from among the rest, set apart for a time, and in whose hands now rested the fate of nations!

“It is epic,” he said, slowly.  “Take your time for it.”

“It’s too big,” said Randy slowly, “and I am not a genius——­ But it is my idea, all right, and some day, perhaps, I shall make it go.”

“You must make it clear to yourself.  Then you can make it clear to others.”

“Yes,” Randy agreed, “and now you can see why I am sitting up nights.”

“Yes.  How did you happen to think of it, Paine?”

“I’ve been turning a lot of things over in my mind——­; what the other fellows are doing about their jobs.  There’s that boy at the butcher’s, and a lot of us went over to do big things.  And now we have come back to the little things.  Why, there’s Dalton’s valet—­Kemp—­taking orders from that—­cad.”

His scorn seemed to cut into the night.  “And I am selling cars——­ I sold one to-day to an old darkey, and I felt my grandsires turn in their graves.  But I like it.”

The Major sat up.  “Your liking it is the biggest thing about you, Paine.”

“What do you mean?”

“A man who can do his day’s work and not whine about it, is the man that counts.  That butcher’s boy may have a soul above weighing meat and wrapping sausages, but at the moment that’s his job, and he is doing it well.  There may be a divine discontent, but I respect the man who keeps his mouth shut until he finds a remedy or a raise.