“See here, Gloria, I’m with you whatever
you do, but for God’s sake be a sport about
it.”
“Oh, don’t fuss at me!” she
wailed.
They exchanged a mute look of no particular significance
but of much stress. Then Anthony took a book
from the shelf and dropped into a chair.
Half an hour later her voice came out of the intense
stillness that pervaded the room and hung like incense
on the air.
“I’ll drive over and see Constance Merriam
to-morrow.”
“All right. And I’ll go to Tarrytown
and see Grampa.”
“—You see,” she added, “it
isn’t that I’m afraid—of this
or anything else. I’m being true to me,
you know.”
“I know,” he agreed.
Adam Patch, in a pious rage against the Germans, subsisted
on the war news. Pin maps plastered his walls;
atlases were piled deep on tables convenient to his
hand together with “Photographic Histories of
the World War,” official Explain-alls, and the
“Personal Impressions” of war correspondents
and of Privates X, Y, and Z. Several times during
Anthony’s visit his grandfather’s secretary,
Edward Shuttleworth, the one-time “Accomplished
Gin-physician” of “Pat’s Place”
in Hoboken, now shod with righteous indignation, would
appear with an extra. The old man attacked each
paper with untiring fury, tearing out those columns
which appeared to him of sufficient pregnancy for
preservation and thrusting them into one of his already
bulging files.
“Well, what have you been doing?” he asked
Anthony blandly. “Nothing? Well, I
thought so. I’ve been intending to drive
over and see you, all summer.”
“I’ve been writing. Don’t you
remember the essay I sent you—the one I
sold to The Florentine last winter?”
“Essay? You never sent me any essay.”
“Oh, yes, I did. We talked about it.”
Adam Patch shook his head mildly.
“Oh, no. You never sent me any essay.
You may have thought you sent it but it never reached
me.”
“Why, you read it, Grampa,” insisted Anthony,
somewhat exasperated, “you read it and disagreed
with it.”
The old man suddenly remembered, but this was made
apparent only by a partial falling open of his mouth,
displaying rows of gray gums. Eying Anthony with
a green and ancient stare he hesitated between confessing
his error and covering it up.
“So you’re writing,” he said quickly.
“Well, why don’t you go over and write
about these Germans? Write something real, something
about what’s going on, something people can
read.”
“Anybody can’t be a war correspondent,”
objected Anthony. “You have to have some
newspaper willing to buy your stuff. And I can’t
spare the money to go over as a free-lance.”
“I’ll send you over,” suggested
his grandfather surprisingly. “I’ll
get you over as an authorized correspondent of any
newspaper you pick out.”
