In the morning she learned for the first time that Wilbur was to go to war in company with a common prize fighter.  It chilled her for the moment, but she sought to make the best of it.

“I hope,” she told Wilbur, “that war will make a better man of your friend.”

“What do you mean—­a better man?” he quickly wanted to know.  “Let me tell you, Spike’s a pretty good man right now for his weight.  You ought to see him in action once!  Don’t let any one fool you about that boy!  What do you expect at a hundred and thirty-three—­a heavyweight?”

After he had gone, late that afternoon, after she had said a solemn farewell to him in the little room of the little house in the side yard, Winona became reckless.  She picked up and scanned with shrewd eyes the photograph of Spike that had been left:  “To my friend Kid Cowan from his friend Eddie—­Spike—­Brennon, 133 lbs. ringside.”

She studied without wincing the crouched figure of hostile eye, even though the costume was not such as she would have selected for a young man.

“After all, he’s only a boy,” she murmured.  She studied again the intent face.  “And he looks as if he had an abundance of pepper.”

She hoped she would be there to nurse them both if anything happened.  She had told Wilbur this, but he had not been encouraging.  He seemed to believe that nothing would happen to either of them.

“Of course we’ll be shot at,” he admitted, “but like as not they’ll miss us.”

Winona sighed and replaced the photograph.  Now they would be a couple of heads clustered with other heads at a car window; smiling, small-town boys going lightly out to their ordeal.  She must hurry and be over!

* * * * *

Wilbur, with his wicker suitcase, paused last to say goodbye to Frank, the dog.  Frank was now a very old dog, having reached a stage of yapping senility, where he found his sole comfort in following the sun about the house and dozing in it, sometimes noisily dreaming of past adventures.  These had been exclusively of a sentimental character, for Frank had never been the fighting dog his first owner had promised he would be.  He was an arch sentimentalist and had followed a career of determined motherhood, bringing into the world litter after litter of puppies, exhibiting all the strains then current in Newbern.  He had surveyed each new family with pride—­families revealing tinges of setter, Airedale, Newfoundland, pointer, collie—­with the hopeful air of saying that a dog never knew what he could do until he tried.  Now he could only dream of past conquests, and merely complained when his master roused him.