with the good lady herself, and in the meantime I'm not going to knuckle
under to you, so don't think it! You needn't come back so precious high
and mighty from your High School, and expect to boss the whole show
here. So there!"

And Winona, who aforetime had been able to subdue her unruly sister,
found herself baffled, for their mother was ill, and must not be
disturbed, and Percy, who might have been on her side, would only lie on
the sofa and guffaw.

"Fight it out, like a pair of Kilkenny cats!" was his advice. "I'll
sweep up the fragments that remain of you afterwards. No, I'm not going
to back either of you. Go ahead and get it over!"

Percy had grown immensely during this last term. He was now seventeen,
and very tall, though at present decidedly lanky. The Cadet Corps at his
school absorbed most of his interests. He held emphatic opinions upon
the war, and aired them daily to his family over the morning paper.
According to his accounts, matters seemed likely to make little progress
until he and his contemporaries at Longworth College should have reached
military age, and be able to take their due part in the struggle, at
which happy crisis the Germans would receive a setback that would
astonish the Kaiser.

"Our British tactics have been all wrong!" he declared. "I can tell you
we follow things out inch by inch at Longworth, and you should just hear
what Johnstone Major has to say. Some of those generals at the Front are
old women! They ought to send them home, and set them some knitting to
do. If I'd the ordering of affairs I'd give the command to fellows under
twenty-five! New wine should be in new bottles."