He began to believe, however, that he would relish a bit of fighting for its own sake.

Winona reasoned with him as she would have reasoned with certain high personages on the other side of the water, and perhaps with as little success.

He replied cryptically that he was an out-and-out phagocyte, and getting more so every time he read a newspaper.

Winona winced at the term--it seemed to carry sinister implications.

Where did the boy hear such words?
This one he had heard on a late Sunday afternoon when he sat, contrary to a municipal ordinance of Newbern, in the back room of Herman Vielhaber, with certain officials sworn to uphold that ordinance, who drank beer and talked largely about what we should do; for it had then become shockingly apparent that the phrase about our being too proud to fight had been, in its essential meaning, misleading.