But we
won't go into that. I'm in for the thing now, and we've got to face our
future. My idea is that this isn't going to be a very protracted
struggle; we shall just scare the enemy to death before it comes to a
fight at all. But we must provide for contingencies, Editha. If anything
happens to me--"
"Oh, George!" She clung to him, sobbing.
"I don't want you to feel foolishly bound to my memory. I should hate
that, wherever I happened to be."
"I am yours, for time and eternity--time and eternity." She liked the
words; they satisfied her famine for phrases.
"Well, say eternity; that's all right; but time's another thing; and I'm
talking about time. But there is something! My mother! If anything
happens--"
She winced, and he laughed. "You're not the bold soldier-girl of
yesterday!" Then he sobered. "If anything happens, I want you to help my
mother out. She won't like my doing this thing. She brought me up to
think war a fool thing as well as a bad thing. My father was in the
Civil War; all through it; lost his arm in it." She thrilled with the
sense of the arm round her; what if that should be lost? He laughed as
if divining her: "Oh, it doesn't run in the family, as far as I know!"
Then he added, gravely: "He came home with misgivings about war, and
they grew on him.
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