ne their part in that last war we'd have
licked the Grays until they cried for mercy! If their army corps had
stood its ground at Volmer--"

"So you've always said," interrupted Tom.

"And the way they cook tripe! I couldn't stomach it, could you? And if
there's anything I am partial to it's a good dish of tripe! And their
light beer--like drinking froth! And their bread--why, it ain't bread!
It's chips! 'Taint fit for civilized folks!"

"But I sort of got used to their ways," said Tom.

"Eh? eh?" Grandfather looked at grandson quizzically, seeking the cause
of such heterodoxy in a northern man. "Say, you ain't been falling in
love?" he hazarded. "You--you ain't going to bring one of them southern
girls home?"

"No!" said Tom laughing.

"Well, I'm glad you ain't, for they're naturally light-minded. I
remember 'em well." He wandered on with his questions and comments. "Is
it a fact, Tom, or was you just joking when you wrote home that the
soldiers took so many baths?"

"Yes, they do."

"Well, that beats me! It's a wonder you didn't all die of pneumonia!" He
paused to absorb the phenomenon. Then his half-childish mind, prompted
by a random recollection, flitted to another subject which set him to
giggling. "And the little crawlers--did they bother you much, the little
crawlers?"

"The little crawlers?" repeated Tom, mystified.

"Yes. Everybody used to get 'em just from living close together. Had to
comb 'em out and pick 'em out of your clothes. The chase we used to call
it."

"No, grandfather, crawlers have gone out of fashion. And no more
epidemics of typhoid and dysentery either," said Tom.

"Times have certainly changed!" grumbled Grandfather Fragini.

Interested in their own reunion, they had paid no attention to a group
of Tom's comrades near-by, sprawled around a newspaper containing the
latest despatches from both capitals. It was a group as typical as that
of the Grays around Hugo Mallin's cot; only the common voice was that of
defence.

"Five million soldiers to our three million!"

"Eighty million people to our fifty million!"

"Because of the odds, they think we are bound to yield, no matter if we
are in the right!"

"Let them come!" said the butcher's son. "If we have to go, it will be
on a wave of blood."

"And they will come some time," said the judge's son. "They want our
land."

"We gain nothing if we beat them back. War will be the ruin of
business,"-said the banker's son.

"Y