Both boys looked gravely ahead of them, and Mr. Brougham had a sickening conviction they were both trying to think of something to say that would calm him. The canteen was just closing, and the two boys made themselves useful in putting things away. "Just as if it were a school picnic," their father thought. As soon as they were on their way home Mrs. Brougham asked about the speech. Had it gone well? "Oh, father was great, mother," David answered. "He took it from them in wads, and presented Lawrence and me to his country with every bond." "A lady behind us was awfully affected," said Lawrence. "She kept whispering that she understood the speaker had two lovely boys of his own." "I could hardly keep Lawrence from telling her that she had not been misinformed." Mr. Brougham sighed. This was not the tone of young men suddenly roused to a new vision of patriotism. He said aloud: "I was glad you felt financially able to take a bond yourself, David." "Oh, yes," answered his son. "I sold my boat yesterday." Mr. Brougham was not so Spartan a parent that he did not feel a pang to think of the boy without his favorite pastime on this perhaps his last summer. "Quite right," he said. "This is no year for pleasure boats." "You get a good price for boats this year," said David. There it was again--that note Mr. Brougham didn't like. Even if David's motives had been financial and not patriotic he might have allowed Lawrence to see an example of self-sacrifice. Instead Lawrence was getting just like his brother. Brougham was not a man who habitually eased his burdens by casting them on his wife, but that night when they went upstairs he took her into his confidence. "Are you satisfied with David's attitude toward the war?" he began. She was a silent, deep woman whose actions always astonished those who had no intuitive knowledge of the great general trends of her nature. She and David usually understood each other fairly well. Now she shook her head. "No," she said. "Good Lord!" said poor Mr. Brougham. "I don't want the boy shot in a trench. I think it's his duty to wait a year or two; but I can't see that he has any enthusiasm, any eagerness, hardly any interest. He seized the paper last evening, and I supposed that he wanted to read about the offensive. Not at all! After a glance at the headlines he turned to the baseball news. Do you understand him?" "No," said his mother. "At his age I should have been in this war, with or without my parents' consent. Mind you, I don't want him in it--not for a year or two. But why doesn't he want to get in? He's not a coward." "No," said his mother, and then she added: "I've thought a great deal about it, and I think it's because he's so young--so immature." "Immature!" cried Mr. Brougham. "Why, he's always using words I don't know the meaning of!"