“H-m!” observed the boy, non-committally. “Of course she wouldn’t,” declared his grandfather. “We’ll have a good time up there, won’t we?” “H-m!” repeated Jimmie. “What’s the matter with you, son?” demanded the old man. “You look and act as glum as bill day. Have things been going wrong? You said something about not being popular with Joe.” “Oh, that?” said Jimmie, eagerly seizing the chance of escape. “That’s so. It’s nothing much. I was reading in the _Herald_ this morning how Professor Garfield up at Hiram College is raising a regiment of college fellers. And I told father that when a man gets to be pretty near fifteen it’s time he was thinking of joining some such regiment as that. He talked to me more than ten minutes without stopping. And then mother took a turn at talking. “They didn’t leave very much of me. They said I’m ungrateful and lazy and undisciplined and a lot of other things. But I wouldn’t have minded all that so much, only--” “Only what?” “Nothing.” “Only they said,” supplemented Dad, “that it was I who put those notions into your head by my gas-bag yarns about the Mexican war and the way I feel about what a man owes as a duty to his country.” “Did father tell you all that?” asked the boy quickly. “How mean of him!” “I’ve heard it before,” evaded Dad. “And the worst of it is, it’s true.” “It isn’t!” vehemently denied Jimmie. “Yes, it is, son. Not that my ideas about patriotism aren’t all right. And a man who has risked his life is sure entitled to tell about those risks. But I had no right to fill your mind with ideas of war when you ought to be thinking about ciphering and grammar and--” “What’s the use of school, anyway?” broke out Jimmie. “I’ll learn more in one month at the war than I’d get in a year at school.” “That’s where you’re mistaken, son. We both want to do big things. But the manager has cast us for little unimportant rôles. And if we’re yellow dogs we’ll sulk over those rôles and neglect ’em and do our feeble best to spoil the whole show. But if we’re the kind of chaps I think we are, Jimmie, you and I will just whirl in and play those two measly little rôles as if they were leading parts and as if the whole theater were applauding us. Sha’n’t we?” The boy squeezed his hand encouragingly, but made no reply. “You see,” went on Dad, “you’ve got a heap better chance than I have. You’re due to be the lead some day. And the better you play the little no-account parts that are handed out to you now, the sooner you’ll be one. But I’m getting a littler rôle each year.” “It’s a shame!” “Most things are. But white men grin and bear it. I was foolish enough to want to go to the war. But your father has shown me where my duty lies. So while he’s down South there, putting a new polish on the old fighting Brinton name, I’m going to make things easier for him by staying here and taking care of the folks he loves. It isn’t such a poor rôle if I can play it right.