in his eye--afraid of nothing, knowing how to do most
anything? His is the kind makes us a great country--outdoor boys from
the little towns and farms. They're the real folks. I'm awful proud of
him, though I ain't wanting that to get out on me. I been watching him
since he was in short pants. He's dependable--knows how. Say, I'm glad
he took to the outdoors and didn't want to dress up every day and be a
clerk in a store or a bank or some place like that. Wasn't it good?"

"Wasn't it?" said Winona, bravely.

"We need this kind in war, and we'll need it even more when the war is
over--when he comes back."

"When he comes back," echoed Winona. And then with an irrelevance she
could not control: "I'm going to a dance with him to-night." Her own
eyes were dancing strangely as she declared it.

"Good thing!" said Sharon. He looked her over shrewdly. "Seems to me
you're looking younger than you ought to," he said.

Winona pouted consciously for the first time in her hitherto honest
life.

"You're looking almighty girlish," added Sharon with almost a leer, and
Winona suffered a fearful apprehension that her ribs were menaced by his
alert thumb. She positively could not be nudged in public. She must draw
the line somewhere, even if she had led him on by pouting. She stepped
quickly to the door of the Elite Bootery.

"He'll come back all right," said Sharon. "Say, did I ever tell you how
he got me to shootin' a good round of golf? I tried it first with the
wooden bludgeons, and couldn't ever make the little round lawns under
seven or eight--parties snickering their fool heads off at me. So I says
I can never make the bludgeons hit right. I don't seem to do more'n
harass the ball into 'em, so he says try an iron all the way. So I tried
the iron utensils, and now I get on the lawn every time in good shape, I
can tell you. Parties soon begun to snicker sour all at once, I want you
to know. It ain't anything for me to make that course in ninety-eight
or"--Sharon's conscience called aloud--"or a hundred and ten or fifteen
or thereabouts, in round numbers."

"I'm so glad," said Winona.

"I give him all the credit. And"--he turned after starting on--"he'll
come back--he'll come back to us!"

Winona drew a fortifying breath and plunged into the Elite Bootery. She
was perhaps more tight-lipped than usual, but to the not-too-acute
observer this would have betokened mere businesslike determination
instead of the panic it was.