“My, my, my! how handsome we are! I’ll bet the Johnny Rebs will just climb over one another to get out of your way.” Junior was fooled by her bravado. He breathed deep of the relief of escaping both her protest and the shame of not going for a soldier. He was young and innocent, but RoBards was old enough to know what abysmal gloom was back of Patty’s jocund eyes. On his last night in town, Junior was away for two hours. When he came home, he said he had been at the armory; but he was so labored in his carelessness that Patty laughed: “Did she cry very hard?” Junior did not even smile at that. There was not much fun in Patty’s laugh, either. The next morning she rejoined the multitudes that crowded the curbs and waved wet handkerchiefs at the striding soldiery while the high walls of Broadway shops flung back and forth the squealing fifes and thrilling drums and the ululant horns. CHAPTER XLVI There was acrid humiliation for RoBards in his inability to take a soldier’s part in the field. He did what he could on the countless boards, but he longed to be young, to ride a snorting charger along a line of bayonets, or to shoulder a rifle and jog over the dusty roads to glory in the flaming red breeches and short jacket of a Zouave. The very children were little Zouaves now in tiny uniforms with tiny weapons. One could not walk the streets without breaking through these infantile armies. RoBards had no military training and even the increasingly liberal standards of the recruiting boards would not let him through to add one more to the vast army that camp fever and dysentery sent to futile graves. Most of all, he dared not leave Patty alone with no man to comfort her. Yet Harry Chalender, who was no younger than he and led the most irregular of lives, managed to do the handsome thing—as always. Since California, with no railroads to link it to the East, could hardly send many troops to the war, Chalender left the Golden State, sped around the Horn, and appeared in New York. The first that RoBards knew of this was the flourish in the newspapers: “With characteristic gallantry and public spirit, Captain Harry Chalender has abandoned his interests in California and come all the way to his native heath to lay his untarnished sword on the altar of his country.” RoBards hated himself for hating Chalender for being so honorable a man; but he could not oust from his heart the bitter thought that Chalender was rendering him one more insult. Chalender had saved his life, dishonored his wife, married his daughter, surpassed him in every way as a captor of the hearts of women and men, as a breaker of the laws of God and man, and as a public servant and a patriot. And RoBards was bound and gagged and could not protest or denounce except in his own dark heart. There was scant salve for his hurts in the low groan of wrath from Patty as she flung the paper to the floor: “If he dares come to our house! if he dares!”