“Only they said,” supplemented Dad, “that it was I who put those notions into your head by my gas-bag yarns about the Mexican war and the way I feel about what a man owes as a duty to his country.”
“Did father tell you all that?” asked the boy quickly. “How mean of him!”
“I’ve heard it before,” evaded Dad. “And the worst of it is, it’s true.”
“Yes, it is, son. Not that my ideas about patriotism aren’t all right. And a man who has risked his life is sure entitled to tell about those risks. But I had no right to fill your mind with ideas of war when you ought to be thinking about ciphering and grammar and--”
“What’s the use of school, anyway?” broke out Jimmie. “I’ll learn more in one month at the war than I’d get in a year at school.”
“That’s where you’re mistaken, son. We both want to do big things. But the manager has cast us for little unimportant rôles. And if we’re yellow dogs we’ll sulk over those rôles and neglect ’em and do our feeble best to spoil the whole show. But if we’re the kind of chaps I think we are, Jimmie, you and I will just whirl in and play those two measly little rôles as if they were leading parts and as if the whole theater were applauding us. Sha’n’t we?”
The boy squeezed his hand encouragingly, but made no reply.
“You see,” went on Dad, “you’ve got a heap better chance than I have. You’re due to be the lead some day. And the better you play the little no-account parts that are handed out to you now, the sooner you’ll be one. But I’m getting a littler rôle each year.”
“Most things are. But white men grin and bear it. I was foolish enough to want to go to the war. But your father has shown me where my duty lies. So while he’s down South there, putting a new polish on the old fighting Brinton name, I’m going to make things easier for him by staying here and taking care of the folks he loves. It isn’t such a poor rôle if I can play it right.
“Look!” he broke off, pointing to the nearer of the two drilling companies in strong disfavor. “See how those fellows are doing the ‘double!’ It’s a crime. That step will shake the backbones out of them and knock out their strength and ginger in half a mile. What fool of a drillmaster is that, anyhow, not to teach them to come down on the ball of the foot when they double? They’re as flat-footed as a batch of Digger Indians. Why, down in Mexico, we could keep at the double for three miles without getting winded.”