Truxton Beaufort rode over to King's Crest the next morning, and sat on the steps of the Schoolhouse. Randy and Major Prime were having breakfast out-of-doors. It was ten o'clock, but they were apparently taking their ease. "I thought you had to work," Truxton said to Randy. "I sold a car yesterday----" "And to-day you are playing around like a plutocrat. I wish I could sell cars. I wish I could do _anything_. Look here, you two. I wonder if you feel as I do." "About what?" "Coming back. I came home expecting a pedestal--and I give you my word nobody seems to think much of me except my family. And they aren't worshipful--exactly. They can't be. How can they rave over my one decoration when that young nigger John has two, and deserved them, and when the butcher and baker and candlestick-maker are my ranking officers? War used to be a gentleman's game. But it isn't any more." "We've got to carve our own pedestals," said the Major. "We are gods of yesterday. The world won't stop to praise us. We did our duty, and we would do it again. But our laurel wreaths are doffed. Our swords are beaten into plowshares. Peace is upon us. If we want pedestals, we've got to carve them." Truxton argued that it wasn't quite fair. The Major agreed that it might not seem so, but the thing had been so vast, and there were so many men involved, so many heroes. "Every little family has a hero of its own," Truxton supplemented. "Mary thinks none of the others did _anything_--I won the _whole_ war. That's where I have it over you two," he grinned. "It is a thing," said the Major, cheerfully, "which can be remedied." "It can," Truxton told him; "which reminds me that our young John is going to marry Flippins' Daisy, and our household is in mourning. Mandy doesn't approve of Daisy, and neither does Calvin. Mandy took to her bed when she heard the news, and young John cooked breakfast to the tune of his Daddy's lamentations. But it was a good breakfast." "Marriage," said the Major, "seems rather epidemic in these days." Randy rose restlessly and sat on the porch rail. "Why in the world does John want to marry Daisy----" "Why not?" easily. "There's some style about Daisy----" "But there are lots of nice, comfortable, hard-working girls in this neighborhood." "Lead me to 'em," Truxton mimicked young John, "lead me to 'em. Mary says that Daisy is the best of the lot. She has plenty of good sense back of her foolishness, and she is one of the best cooks in the county. She and John are planning to go up to Washington and open an old-fashioned oyster house. She says that people are complaining that they can't get oysters as they did in the old days, and she is going to show them. I wouldn't be surprised if they made a success of it. And I tell you this--I envy John. He will have a paying business, and here I am without a thing ahead of me, and I have married a wife and the ravens won't feed us."