A Mark to Shoot At

An hour or so later Sam Carr came trudging home with a rod in his hand
and a creel slung from his shoulder, in which creel reposed a half dozen
silver-sided trout on a bed of grass.

"Well, well, well," he said, at sight of Thompson, and looked earnestly
at the two of them, until at last a slow smile began to play about his
thin lips. "Now, like the ancient Roman, I can wrap my toga about me and
die in peace."

"Oh, Dad, what a thing to say," Sophie protested.

"Figuratively, my dear, figuratively," he assured her. "Merely my way of
saying that I am glad your man has come home from the war, and that you
can smile again."

He tweaked her ear playfully, when Sophie blushed. They went into the
house, and the trout disappeared kitchenward in charge of a bland
Chinaman, to reappear later on the luncheon table in a state of
delicious brown crispness. After that Carr smoked a cigar and Thompson a
cigarette, and Sophie sat between them with the old, quizzical twinkle
in her eyes and a smile hovering about the corners of her mouth.

"Come out and let's make the round of the works, you two," Carr
suggested at last.

"You go, Wes," Sophie said. "I have promised to help a struggling young
housewife with some sewing this afternoon."

So they set forth, Carr and Thompson, on a path through the woods toward
where the donkey engines filled the valley with their shrill tootings
and the shudder of their mighty labor. And as they went, Carr talked.