Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/426

"Rather! There's a night's work ahead. But I'm as good as new after our talk."

Campton looked at him wistfully. "You know I'd like to paint you some day."

"Oh———" cried Boylston, suffused with blushes; and added with a laugh: "It's my uniform, not me."

"Well, your uniform is you—it's all of you young men."

Boylston stood in the window twisting his cap about undecidedly. "Look here, sir—now that you've got back to work again———"

"Well?" Campton interrupted suspiciously.

The young man cleared his throat and spoke with a rush. "His mother wants most awfully that something should be decided about the monument."

"Monument? What monument? I don't want my son to have a monument," Campton exploded.

But Boylston stuck to his point. "It'll break her heart if something isn't put on the grave before long. It's five months now—and they fully recognize your right to decide———"

"Damn what they recognize! It was they who brought him to Paris; they made him travel when he wasn't fit; they killed him."

"Well—supposing they did: judge how much more they must be suffering!"

"Let 'em suffer. He's my son—my son. He isn't Brant's."