l meet you. Is that good
enough?"

He turned and strode away. But she was after him. "Where you goin'
to-morrow?"

"I'm goin' to war, that's where."

"Yes you are!" scoffed Miss Kearney. Then, at his silence: "You didn't
go and do a fool thing like that?"

"I sure did."

"When you goin'?"

"To-morrow."

"Well, of all the big boobs," sneered Miss Kearney; "what did you go and
do that for?"

"Search _me_," said Buzz, dully. "Search _me_."

Then he turned and went on toward home, alone. The Kearney girl's silly,
empty laugh came back to him through the darkness. It might have been
called a scornful laugh if the Kearney girl had been capable of any
emotion so dignified as scorn.

The family was still up. The door was open to the warm May night. The
Werners, in their moments of relaxation, were as unbuttoned and highly
_negligee_ as one of those group pictures you see of the Robert Louis
Stevenson family. Pa, shirt-sleeved, stocking-footed, asleep in his
chair. Ma's dress open at the front. Minnie, in an untidy kimono,
sewing.

On this flaccid group Buzz burst, bomb-like. He hung his hat on the
hook, wordlessly. The noise he made woke his father, as he had meant
that it should. There came a muttered growl from the old man. Buzz
leaned against the stairway door, negligently. The eyes of the three
were on him.

"Well," he said, "I guess you won't be bothered with me much longer." Ma
Werner's head came up sharply at that.

"What you done, Ernie?"

"Enlisted."

"Enlisted--for what?"

"For the war; what do you suppose?"

Ma Werner rose at that, heavily. "Ernie! You never!"

Pa Werner was wide awake now. Out of his memory of the old country, and
soldier service there, he put his next question. "Did you sign to it?"

"Yeh."

"When you goin'?"

"To-morrow."

Even Pa Werner gasped at that.

In families like the Werners emotion is rarely expressed. But now,
because of something in the stricken face and starting eyes of the
woman, and the open-mouthed dumbfoundedness of the old man, and the
sudden tender fearfulness in the face of the girl; and because, in that
moment, all these seemed very safe, and accustomed, and, somehow, dear,
Buzz curled his mouth into the sneer of the tough guy and spoke out of
the corner of that contorted feature.

"What did you think I was goin' to do? Huh? Stick around here and take
dirt from the bunch of you! Nix! I'm through!"

There was nothing dramatic about Buzz's go