“Educated!” Sharon imitated a porpoise without knowing it.  “Educated out of books!  All any of that rabble rout of his knows is what they read secondhand.  They don’t know people.  Don’t know capitalists.  Don’t even know these wage slaves they write about.  That’s why they can’t stop the war.  They may be educated, but you’re enlightened.  They know more books, but you know more life in a minute than they’ll ever know—­you got a better idea of the what-for in this world.  Let ’em write!  You fight!  If it rests on that hairy bunch to stop the war you’ll get a bellyful of fighting.  They’re just a noisy fringe of buzzers round the real folks of this country.”

“Yes, sir,” said Wilbur.  “I thought I’d ask.”

“Well, now you know.  Shove off!”

“Yes, sir.”  Sharon’s tone changed to petulance.

“That’s right, and leave me here to farm twenty-five hundred acres all by myself, just when I was going to put in tractors.  That’s the kind you are—­just a fool country-town boy, with a head full of grand notions.  Well, somebody’s got to raise food for the world.  She’s goin’ short pretty soon or I miss my guess.  Somebody’s got to raise bread and meat.  All right, leave me here to do the dirty work while you flourish round over there seein’ the world and havin’ a good time.  I’m sick of the sight of you and your airs.  Get out!”

“Yes, sir.”

“When you leaving?”

“To-morrow night—­six-fifty-eight.”

“Sooner the better!”

“Yes, sir.”

Sharon turned back to the car, grumbling incoherent phrases.  He affected to busy himself with the mechanism that had just been readjusted, looking at it wisely, thumbing a valve, though with a care to leave things precisely as they were.

* * * * *

That afternoon as Sharon made an absorbed progress along River Street he jostled Winona Penniman, who with even a surpassing absorption had been staring into the window of one of those smart shops marking Newbern’s later growth.  Whereas boots and shoes had been purchased from an establishment advertising simple Boots and Shoes, they were now sought by people of the right sort from this new shop which was labelled the Elite Bootery.

Winona had halted with assumed carelessness before its attractively dressed window displaying a colourful array of satin dancing slippers with high heels and bejewelled toes.  Winona’s assumption of carelessness had been meant to deceive passers-by into believing that she looked upon these gauds with a censorious eye, and not as one meaning flagrantly to purchase of them.  Her actual dire intention was nothing to flaunt in the public gaze.  Nor did she mean to voice her wishes before a shopful of people who might consider them ambiguous.