... The fellows’ eyes popped as I took Vera through the line. She is a stunner! I saluted the captain when I went back, and he did not ask me to explain why I took so much on myself, though the lieutenant, who came too late, I think was furious with me. We yanked Knudsen out of the trench, and the captain, forming us instantly, marched us away in the direction that Vera didn’t take. When he gave us rest she was clean out of sight, and we lay down in the bushes and loafed for a while.

Nobody in the squad asked me a question. Young David’s face was a study in ignorance, but of course it was he who let the others know that I was to be let alone. From his squad Randall began to throw remarks at me, but Pickle turned on him very savagely. “Oh, yap, yap, yap!” Captain Kirby when he went by looked at me very intently, and I looked straight back at him. But I couldn’t look at any of the other fellows. Curious that a man feels so self-conscious. You women know how to pretend, but few of us seem to manage it.

Yet I wasn’t sorry it came about so. The squad stands together on anything that happens to any one of us. I felt proud to belong to it. When we marched back and had got to the main road again, the captain disappeared; it was the lieutenant who got us to camp and dismissed us there. I knew where the captain went when after this evening’s mess I was ordered to go to his tent. He was writing there, and turned round when I scratched, which is a little way we have in the army, as there is no way of knocking. I saluted.

“Oh, Mr. Godwin,” said he, returning my salute. “Miss Wadsworth sends a message. You’re to come to see her this evening, after general conference.”

“I was planning to go to company conference, sir,” said I.

I suppose she knew I would say that, for he was ready for me. “She made it an order, Mr. Godwin,” said he, very gravely.

“Very well, sir,” said I, saluted again, and left him writing—or pretending to. I suppose she’s got him, like the rest of them.

When I called on Vera we were very proper, and very old-friendly, and radically different in our ideas, as it seems destined for us to be. I told her how much I liked the training, and she said how much she disapproved of it, and so we passed the time. Once she insisted on telling me all about what her sister Frances is doing now. Then officers began to come in, and to chat with the old colonel in the next room, and glance through the door at us, as if saying, “When is that dam rookie going to go?” So I left. It was nearly time, anyway, for me to be tucked up in bed like a good little boy, and leave the field to my betters.