books,
but you know more life in a minute than they'll ever know--you got a
better idea of the what-for in this world. Let 'em write! You fight! If
it rests on that hairy bunch to stop the war you'll get a bellyful of
fighting. They're just a noisy fringe of buzzers round the real folks of
this country."

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur. "I thought I'd ask."

"Well, now you know. Shove off!"

"Yes, sir." Sharon's tone changed to petulance.

"That's right, and leave me here to farm twenty-five hundred acres all
by myself, just when I was going to put in tractors. That's the kind you
are--just a fool country-town boy, with a head full of grand notions.
Well, somebody's got to raise food for the world. She's goin' short
pretty soon or I miss my guess. Somebody's got to raise bread and meat.
All right, leave me here to do the dirty work while you flourish round
over there seein' the world and havin' a good time. I'm sick of the
sight of you and your airs. Get out!"

"Yes, sir."

"When you leaving?"

"To-morrow night--six-fifty-eight."

"Sooner the better!"

"Yes, sir."

Sharon turned back to the car, grumbling incoherent phrases. He affected
to busy himself with the mechanism that had just been readjusted,
looking at it wisely, thumbing a valve, though with a care to leave
things precisely as they were.

* * * * *

That afternoon as Sharon made an absorbed progress along River Street he
jostled Winona Penniman, who with even a surpassing absorption had been
staring into the window of one of those smart shops marking Newbern's
later growth. Whereas boots and shoes had been purchased from an
establishment advertising simple Boots and Shoes, they were now sought
by people of the right sort from this new shop which was labelled the
Elite Bootery.

Winona had halted with assumed carelessness before its attractively
dressed window displaying a colourful array of satin dancing slippers
with high heels and bejewelled toes. Winona's assumption of carelessness
had been meant to deceive passers-by into believing that she looked upon
these gauds with a censorious eye, and not as one meaning flagrantly to
purchase of them. Her actual dire intention was nothing to flaunt in the
public gaze. Nor did she mean to voice her wishes before a shopful of
people who might consider them ambiguous.

Four times she had passed the door of the shop, waiting for a dull
moment in its traffic. Now but two women