He
spoke very seriously. "He was a captain in the Boer War, you know, so he
knows something about soldiering. He thinks he'll be taken, though he's a
little older than most of the men who'll go. He'll be an officer, of
course. And he says I've got to look after the mater when he's gone."
"You can do it, too," said Harry, surprised, despite himself, by the change
in his chum's manner. "You seem older than I now, Dick, and I've always
thought you were a kid!"
"The pater says we've all got to be men, now," said Dick, steadily. "The
mater cried a bit when he said he was going--but I think she must have
known all the time he was going. Because when he told us--we were at the
breakfast table--she sort of cried a little, and then she stopped.
"'I've got everything ready for you,' she said.
"And he looked at her, and smiled. 'So you knew I was going?' he asked her.
And she nodded her head, and he got up and kissed her. I never saw him do
that before--he never did that before, when I was looking on," Dick
concluded seriously.
"I hope he'll come back all right, Dick," said Harry. "It's hard, old
chap!"
"I wouldn't have him stay home for anything!" said Dick, fiercely. "And I
will do my share! You see if I don't! I don't care what they want me to do!
I'll run errands--I'll sweep out the floors in the War Office, so that some
man can go to war! I'll do _any_thing!"
Somehow Harry realized in that moment how hard it was going to be to beat a
country where even the boys felt like that! The change in the usually
thoughtless, light-hearted Dick impressed him more than anything else had
been able to do with the real meaning of what had come about so suddenly.
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