Sharon laboured with a choice bit of sarcasm.

“No, I guess it’ll take more’n you to stop it, even with that Elihu Titus going along.  Of course, some spy may get the news to ’em that you’ve started, and they may say, ’Why keep up the struggle if this Cowan boy’s goin’ in against us?’ But my guess is they’ll brazen it out for a month or so longer.  Of course they’ll be scared stiff.”

Wilbur grinned at him, then spoke gravely.

“You know what I mean—­Merle.  He says the plain people will never allow this war to go on, because they’ve been tricked into it by Wall Street or something.  I read it in his magazine.  They’re working against the war night and day, he says.  Well, all I mean, I’d hate to go over there and be seasick and everything and then find they had stopped it.”

Intently, grimly, Sharon climbed from his car.  His short, fat leg went back and he accurately kicked an empty sprinkling can across the floor.  It was a satisfying object to kick; it made a good noise and came to a clattering rest on its dented side.  It was so satisfying that with another kick he sent the can bounding through an open door.

“Gave it the second barrel, didn’t you?” said Wilbur.  Sharon grinned now.

“Just a letter to your brother,” he explained.  Then he became profanely impassioned.  “Fudge!  Fudge and double fudge!  Scissors and white aprons!  Prunes and apricots!  No!  That war won’t be stopped by any magazine!  Go on—­fight your fool head off!  Don’t let any magazine keep you back!”

“Yes, sir,” said Wilbur.

“They can’t stop the war, because there are too many boys like you all over this land.  Trick or no trick, that’s what they’re up against.  You’ll all fight—­while they’re writing their magazines.  Your reactions are different.  That’s a word I got from the dirty thing—­and from that brother of yours.  He gets a lot of use out of that word—­always talking about his reactions.  Just yesterday I said to him:  ’Take care of your actions and your reactions will take care of themselves.’  He don’t cotton to me.  I guess I never buttered him up with praise any too much.  His languageousness gets on me.  He’s got Gideon and Harvey D. on a hot griddle, too, though they ain’t lettin’ on.  Here the Whipples have always gone to war for their country—­Revolutionary War and 1812, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American—­Harvey D. was in that.  Didn’t do much fighting, but he was belligerent enough.  And now this son of his sets back and talks about his reactions!  What I say—­he’s a Whipple in name only.”

“He’s educated,” protested Wilbur, quick to defend this brother, even should he cheat him out of the good plain fighting he meant to do.