s and social nature. He glances about the room, and
then lights a cigarette.

ASHER PINDAR, his father, enters, lower right. He is a tall,
strongly built man of about sixty, with iron grey hair and beard.
His eyes are keen, shadowed by bushy brows, and his New England
features bear the stamp of inflexible "character." He wears a black
"cutaway" coat and dark striped trousers; his voice is strong and
resonant. But he is evidently preoccupied and worried, though he
smiles with affection as he perceives GEORGE. GEORGE'S fondness for
him is equally apparent.

GEORGE. Hello, dad.

ASHER. Oh, you're here, George.

GEORGE (looking, at ASHER). Something troubling you?

ASHER (attempting dissimulation). Well, you're going off to France,
they've only given you two days' leave, and I've scarcely seen anything
of you. Isn't that enough?

GEORGE. I know how busy you've been with that government contract on
your hands. I wish I could help.

ASHER. You're in the army now, my boy. You can help me again when you
come back.

GEORGE. I want to get time to go down to the shops and say goodbye to
some of the men.

ASHER. No, I shouldn't do that, George.

GEORGE (surprised). Why not? I used to be pretty chummy with them, you
know,--smoke a pipe with them occasionally in the noon hour.

ASHER. I know. But it doesn't do for an employer to be too familiar with
the hands in these days.

GEORGE. I guess I've got a vulgar streak in me somewhere, I get along
with the common people. There'll be lots of them in the trenches, dad.

ASHER. Under military discipline.

GEORGE (laughing). We're supposed to be fighting a war for democracy. I
was talking to old Bains yesterday,--he's still able to run a lathe, and
he was in the Civil War, you know. He was telling me how the boys in his
regiment stopped to pick blackberries on the way to the battle of Bull
Run.

ASHER. That's democracy! It's what we're doing right now--stopping to
pick blackberries. This country's been in the war six months, since
April, and no guns, no munitions, a handful of men in France--while the
world's burning!

GEORGE. Well, we won't sell Uncle Sam short yet. Something is bothering
you, dad.

ASHER. No--no, but the people in Washington change my specifications
every week, and Jonathan's arriving today, of all days.

GEORGE. Has Dr. Jonathan turned up?

ASHER. I haven't seen him yet. It seems he got here this morning. No
telegram,