The older man shook his head. “I doubt,” he said, “if history will take your view either of the motives of those in power or of the way the war was carried on. It was a great and noble struggle, heroically fought by those deluded people who were in the wrong, and stubbornly contested at immense self-sacrifice by those who were in the right.”
“What a pity it was,” said young Howard to the newspaper man, with a rudeness that drew a frown from his father, “that you didn’t get to show ‘em how to carry on the war.”
“Well,” said Yates, with a humorous twinkle in his eye, “I flatter myself that I would have given them some valuable pointers. Still, it is too late to bemoan their neglect now.”
“Oh, you may have a chance yet,” continued the unabashed young man. “They say the Fenians are coming over here this time sure. You ought to volunteer either on our side or on theirs, and show how a war ought to be carried on.”
“Oh, there’s nothing in the Fenian scare! They won’t venture over. They fight with their mouths. It’s the safest way.”
“I believe you,” said the youth significantly.
Perhaps it was because the boy had been so inconsiderate as to make these remarks that Yates received a cordial invitation from both Mr. and Mrs. Howard to visit the farm as often as he cared to do so. Of this privilege Yates resolved to avail himself, but he would have prized it more if Miss Margaret had added her word--which she did not, perhaps because she was so busy looking after the bread. Yates knew, however, that with a woman apparent progress is rarely synonymous with real progress. This knowledge soothed his disappointment.
As he walked back to the camp he reviewed his own feelings with something like astonishment. The march of events was rapid even for him, who was not slow in anything he undertook.
“It is the result of leisure,” he said to himself. “It is the first breathing time I have had for fifteen years. Not two days of my vacation gone, and here I am hopelessly in love!”
Yates had intended to call at the Bartletts’ and escort Renmark back to the woods; but when he got outside he forgot the existence of the professor, and wandered somewhat aimlessly up the side road, switching at the weeds that always grow in great profusion along the ditches of a Canadian country thoroughfare. The day was sunny and warm, and as Yates wandered on in the direction of the forest he thought of many things. He had feared that he would find life deadly dull so far from New York, without even the consolation of a morning-paper, the feverish reading of which had become a sort of vice with him, like smoking. He had imagined that he could not exist without his morning paper, but he now realized that it was not nearly so important a factor in life as he had supposed; yet he sighed when he thought of it, and wished he had one with him of current date. He could now, for the first time in many years, read a paper without that vague fear which always possessed him when he took up an opposition sheet, still damp from the press. Before he could enjoy it his habit was to scan it over rapidly to see if it contained any item of news which he himself had missed the previous day. The impending “scoop” hangs over the head of the newspaper man like the sword so often quoted. Great as the joy of beating the opposition press is, it never takes the poignancy of the sting away from a beating received. If a terrible disaster took place, and another paper gave fuller particulars than the _Argus_ did, Yates found himself almost wishing the accident had not occurred, although he recognized such a wish as decidedly unprofessional.