"Didn't they keep you for drill? How does it seem to be a soldier?" "I didn't enlist, mother." "Didn't enlist? Why not? I thought that was the big thing you were going to do." "They wouldn't take me." "Why, Pen! what was the matter? I thought it was all as good as settled." "Well, you know that old trouble about the flag at Chestnut Hill?" "I know. I've never forgotten it. But every one else has, surely." "No, mother, they haven't. That's the reason they wouldn't take me." "But, Pen, that was years and years ago. You were just a baby. You've paid dearly enough for that. It's not fair! It's not human!" She, too, was aroused to the point of indignant but unavailing protest; for she too knew how the boy, long years ago, had expiated to the limit of repentance and suffering the one sensational if venial fault of his boyhood. "I know, mother. That's all true. I know it's horribly unjust; but what can you do? It's a thing you can't explain because it's partly true. It will keep cropping up always, and how I am ever going to live it down I don't know. Oh, I don't know!" He flung himself into a chair, thrust his hands deep into his trousers' pockets and stared despairingly into some forbidding distance. She grew sympathetic then, and consoling, and went to him and put her arm around his neck and laid her face against his head and tried to comfort him. "Never mind, dearie! So long as you, yourself, know that you love the flag, and so long as I know it, we can afford to wait for other people to find it out." "No, mother, we can't. They've got to be shown. I can't live this way. Some way or other I've got to prove that I'm no coward and I'm no traitor." "You're too severe with yourself, Pen. There are other ways, perhaps better ways, for men to prove that they love their country besides fighting for her. To be a good citizen may be far more patriotic than to be a good soldier." "I know. That's one of the things I've learned, and I believe it. And that'll do for most fellows, but it won't do for me. My case is different. I mistreated the flag once with my hands and arms and feet and my whole body, and I've got to give my hands and arms and feet and my whole body now to make up for it. There's no other way. I couldn't make the thing right in a thousand years simply by being a good citizen. Don't you see, mother? Don't you understand?" He looked up into her face with tear filled eyes. The thought that had long been with him that he must prove his patriotism by personal sacrifice, had grown during these last few days into a settled conviction and a great desire. He wanted her to see the situation as he saw it, and to feel with him the bitterness of his disappointment. And she did. She twined her arm more closely about his neck and pressed her lips against his hair.