Page:Patriotic pieces from the Great War, Jones, 1918.djvu/80

76 each star for one man of my blood who risks his life for America.

"It costs fifteen cents," said he; "a nickel a star."

Through a sort of haze I stared at him. "Fifteen cents!" he had said. "A nickel a star."

And suddenly I seemed to see the oldest of the three: a desk-bound man with straight and pleasant lips and the comfortable ways of one who is happy among simple things. There had been no yearning for adventure, no restlessness. Yet how quickly he had gone just the same. Like a child, who hears a loved one calling him, he had closed his books and risen to answer—at once. One long look into steady eyes very like his own. Only one question: "You want me to go. Mother?" And the cry in answer: "My boy!"

And the other one—the second; he who is so gentle that babies nod wisely at him, as though there were some secret between them. I remember the winter's night he brought the stray kitten home and fed it with warm milk, drop by drop. Already his comrades in the Signal Corps complain because his horse follows him inside their tent. A man so generous that his touch holds a kind of healing. Yet he too has gone—to kill! Gone with the