rhaps she would take her to
Europe. But until things settled down, as Katie vaguely put it, she
thought it just the thing for Ann to have the little trip with Worth.

Wayne listened gravely, but did not object. He was quiet, and, Katie
thought, not well. She suggested that working so steadily during the hot
weather was not good for him.

He laughed shortly and pointed through the open door to the shops where
long rows of men were working at forges--perspiration streaming down
their faces.

But instead of alluding to them he asked abruptly: "How is she today?"

"Tired," said Katie. "She didn't sleep well last night."

Something in the way he was looking at her brought to Katie acute
realization of how much she cared for Wayne. He was her big brother. She
had always been his little sister. They were not giving to thinking of it
that way--certainly not speaking of it--but the tenderness of the
relationship was there. Consciousness of it came now as she seemed to
read in Wayne's look that she hurt him in withholding her confidence, in
not having felt it possible to trust even him.

She broke under that look. "Wayne dear," she said unevenly, "I don't deny
there is something to tell. I'd like to tell you, if I could. If ever I
can, I will."

His reply was only to dismiss it with a curt little nod.

But Katie knew that did not necessarily mean that he was feeling curt.

She was drawn back to the open door from which she could see the long
double line of men working steadily at the forges.

"What are those men doing?" she asked.

"Forging one of the parts of a rifle," he replied.

It recalled what the man who mended the boats had said of the saddles:
that the first war those saddles would see would be the war over the
manufacture of them. Would he go so far as to say the first use for the
rifles--?

Surely not. He must have been speaking figuratively.

But something in the might of the thing--the long lines of men at work on
rifles to be used in a possible war--made the industrial side of it seem
more vital and more interesting than the military phase. This was here.
This was real. There was practically no military life at the Arsenal--not
military life in the sense one found it at the cavalry post. That had
made it seem, from a military standpoint, uninteresting. But here was the
real life--over in what the women of the quarter vaguely called "the
shops," and dismissed as disposed of by the term.

Suddenly sh