“I knowed you would,” she sobbed.  “I always knowed you would, you nice boy, you!  Old Mahail’ knowed!”

Her upturned face was working all over; her mouth, her eyebrows, even the wrinkles on her low forehead were working and twitching.  Claude felt a tightening in his throat as he tenderly regarded that face; behind the pale eyes, under the low brow where there was not room for many thoughts, an idea was struggling and tormenting her.  The same idea that had been tormenting him.

“You’re all right, Mahailey,” he muttered, patting her back and turning away.  “Now hurry breakfast.”

“You ain’t told your mudder yit?” she whispered.

“No, not yet.  But she’ll be all right, too.”  He caught up his cap and went down to the barn to look after the horses.

When Claude returned, the family were already at the breakfast table.  He slipped into his seat and watched his mother while she drank her first cup of coffee.  Then he addressed his father.

“Father, I don’t see any use of waiting for the draft.  If you can spare me, I’d like to get into a training camp somewhere.  I believe I’d stand a chance of getting a commission.”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”  Mr. Wheeler poured maple syrup on his pancakes with a liberal hand.  “How do you feel about it, Evangeline?”

Mrs. Wheeler had quietly put down her knife and fork.  She looked at her husband in vague alarm, while her fingers moved restlessly about over the tablecloth.

“I thought,” Claude went on hastily, “that maybe I would go up to Omaha tomorrow and find out where the training camps are to be located, and have a talk with the men in charge of the enlistment station.  Of course,” he added lightly, “they may not want me.  I haven’t an idea what the requirements are.”

“No, I don’t understand much about it either.”  Mr. Wheeler rolled his top pancake and conveyed it to his mouth.  After a moment of mastication he said, “You figure on going tomorrow?”

“I’d like to.  I won’t bother with baggage—­some shirts and underclothes in my suitcase.  If the Government wants me, it will clothe me.”

Mr. Wheeler pushed back his plate.  “Well, now I guess you’d better come out with me and look at the wheat.  I don’t know but I’d best plough up that south quarter and put it in corn.  I don’t believe it will make anything much.”

When Claude and his father went out of the door, Dan sprang up with more alacrity than usual and plunged after them.  He did not want to be left alone with Mrs. Wheeler.  She remained sitting at the foot of the deserted breakfast table.  She was not crying.  Her eyes were utterly sightless.  Her back was so stooped that she seemed to be bending under a burden.  Mahailey cleared the dishes away quietly.

Out in the muddy fields Claude finished his talk with his father.  He explained that he wanted to slip away without saying good-bye to any one.  “I have a way, you know,” he said, flushing, “of beginning things and not getting very far with them.  I don’t want anything said about this until I’m sure.  I may be rejected for one reason or another.”