Page:War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy, John Luther Long, 1913.djvu/288

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

WAR

We had it all arranged that Dave and the hireland, with a little help from Betsy, could keep the farm on top of the earth for the little time Jon and I would be away.

We had an idea that when we got to fighting the war would be a matter of months.

And so came the last day before we moved. Dave was as gay as ever, and still thought of it as a picnic. He made a kind of farewell address to Jon and me—from him and Evelyn. There was both poetry and Scripture in it. Then he talked in a funny way about the red roses Evelyn wore in her cheeks—called them Lancaster roses—and gave Jon and me a bunch of white ones out of the ones that Evelyn wore—which he called York roses. I didn't know much about that business of York and Lancaster roses, except that it had nothing to do with those towns over in Pennsylvania, but some old-time business off in England. Yet, under it all, I saw that Dave was sorry for us, and was just trying to keep up and keep us all up—on account of Evelyn, I expect. We

272