Dawn by Eleanor Porter (best finance books of all time TXT) 📕

"No, no!—that is, I—I think I'd better be going home," he stammered.

But Keith Burton did not seem even to hear.

"Say, just try your hand at this puzzle," he was saying gayly. "I gaveit up, and I'll bet you'll have to," he finished, thrusting apasteboard box into his visitor's hands and nicely adjudging thedistance a small table must be pushed in order to bring itconveniently in front of John McGuire's chair.

The quick tightening of John McGuire's lips and the proud lifting ofhis chin told that Keith's challenge had been accepted even before thelaconic answer came.

"Oh, you do, do you? Well, we'll see whether I'll have to give it upor not."

John McGuire loved picture puzzles, as Keith Burton well knew.

It was easy after that. Keith took it so unhesitatingly for grantedthat they were to go indoors when it was cold that John McGuire foundit difficult to object; and it was not long before the two boys weregoing back and forth between the two houses with almost as much easeas if their feet had been guided by the eye instead of by the tap of aslender stick.

John McGuire was learning a great deal from Keith these days, thoughit is doubtful if he realized it. It is doubtful, also, if he realizedhow constantly he was being made to talk of the war and of hisexperience in it. But Keith realized it. Keith was not looking for"the way" now. He believed he had found it; and there came a day whenhe deemed the time had come to try to carry it out.

They were in his own home living-room. It had been a wonderful storythat John McGuire had told that day of a daring excursion into NoMan's Land, and what came of it. Upstairs in the studio Daniel Burtonwas sitting alone, as Keith knew. Keith drew a long breath and madethe plunge. Springing to his feet he turned toward the door that ledinto the hall.

"McGuire, that was a bully story—a corking good story. I want dad tohear it. Wait, I'll get him." And he was out of the room with the doorfast closed behind him before John McGuire could so much as draw abreath.

Upstairs, Daniel Burton, already in the secret, heard Keith's eagersummons and came at once. For some days he had been expecting justsuch an urgent call from Keith's lips. He knew too much to delay. Hewas down the stairs and at Keith's side in an incredibly short time.Then together they pushed open the door and entered the living-room.

John McGuire was on his feet. Very plainly he was intending to gohome, and at once. But Daniel Burton paid no attention to that. Hecame straight toward him and took his hand.

"I call this mighty good of you, McGuire," he said. "My boy here hasbeen raving about your stories of the war until I'm fairly green withenvy. Now I'm to hear a bit of them myself, he says. I wish you wouldtell me some of your experiences, my lad. You know a chance like thisis a real god-send to us poor stay-at-homes. Now fire away! I'mready."

But John McGuire was not ready. True, he sat down—but not until aftera confused "No, no, I must go home—that is, really, they're not worthrepeating—those stories." And he would not talk at all—at first.

Daniel Burton talked, however. He talked of wars in general and of the

Civil War in particular; and he told the stories of Antietam and

Gettysburg as they had been told to him by his father. Then from

Gettysburg he jumped to Flanders, and talked of aeroplanes, and gas-

masks, and tanks, and trenches, and dugouts.

Little by little then John McGuire began to talk—sometimes a wholesentence, sometimes only a word or two. But there was no fire, noenthusiasm, no impetuous rush of words that brought the very din ofbattle to their ears. And not once did Daniel Burton thrust hisfingers into his pocket for his pencil and notebook. Yet, when it wasall over, and John McGuire had gone home, Keith dropped into his chairwith a happy sigh.

"It wasn't much, dad, I know," he admitted, "but it was something. Itwas a beginning, and a beginning is something—with John McGuire."

And it was something; for the next time Daniel Burton entered theroom, John McGuire did not even start from his chair. He gave a faintsmile of welcome, too, and he talked sooner, and talked more—thoughthere was little of war talk; and for the second time Daniel Burtondid not reach for his pencil.

But the third time he did. A question, a comment, a chance word—neither Keith nor his father could have told afterward what startedit. They knew only that a sudden light as of a flame leaped into JohnMcGuire's face—and he was back in the trenches of France and carryingthem with him.

At the second sentence Daniel Burton's fingers were in his pocket, andat the third his pencil was racing over the paper at breakneck speed.There was no pause then, no time for thought, no time for carefulforming of words and letters. There was only the breakneck racebetween a bit of lead and an impassioned tongue; and when it was allover, there were only a well-nigh hopeless-looking mass ofhieroglyphics in Daniel Burton's notebook—and the sweat of spentexcitement on the brows of two youths and a man.

"Gee! we got it that time!" breathed Keith, after John McGuire hadgone home.

"Yes; only I was wondering if I had really—got it," murmured DanielBurton, eyeing a bit ruefully the confused mass of words and lettersin his notebook. "Still, I reckon I can dig it out all right—if I doit right away," he finished confidently. And he did dig it out beforehe slept that night.

If Daniel Burton and his son Keith thought the thing was done, and itwas going to be easy sailing thereafter, they found themselves greatlymistaken. John McGuire scarcely said five sentences about the war thenext time they were together, though Daniel Burton had his pencilpoised expectantly from the start. He said only a little more the nexttime, and the next; and Daniel Burton pocketed his pencil