"The more you become interested in it--and I believe it will be progressive--the less you will mind saying so."
"It is a strange interest--utterly unlike me--"
"How do you know it isn't more like you than anything you ever did in your life?"
That struck him to silence; he gave her a quick inquiring glance, and looked away at once; and Sharlee, for the moment entirely oblivious of the noise and the throng all about her, went on.
"I called that a magnificent boast once--about your being editor of the _Post_. Do you remember? Isn't it time I was confessing that you have got the better of me?"
"I think it is too soon," he answered, in his quietest voice, "to say whether I have got the better of you, or you have got the better of me."
Sharlee looked off down the street. "But you certainly will be editor of the _Post_ some day."
"As I recall it, we did not speak only of editorial writing that night."
From far away floated the strains of "Dixie," crashed out by forty bands. The crowd on the sidewalks stirred; prolonged shouts went up; and now all those who were seated on the porch arose at one motion and came forward.
Sharlee had to spring up to greet still another relative. She came back in a moment, sincerely hoping that Mr. Queed would resume the conversation which her exclamation had interrupted. But he spoke of quite a different matter, a faint cloud on his intelligent brow.
"You should hear Professor Nicolovius on these veterans of yours."
"What does he say about them? Something hateful, I'm sure."
"Among other things, that they are a lot of professional beggars who have lived for forty years on their gray uniforms, and can best serve their country by dying with all possible speed. Do you know," he mused, "if you could hear him, I believe you would be tempted to guess that he is a former Union officer--who got into trouble, perhaps, and was cashiered."
"No," said he, honest, but looking rather annoyed at having given her such an opening, "I know only what he told me."
"Sharlee," came her mother's voice from the rear, "are you sitting on the cold stone?"
"Well, he is not a Union officer," said Sharlee to Queed, "for if he were, he would not be bitter. All the bitterness nowadays comes from the non-combatants, the camp-followers, the sutlers, and the cowards. Look, Mr. Queed! _Look!_"