“Now you’re yourself again, Miss Lucy.”

The boy’s face is very sensitive; I saw that he was more hurt than angry, and he flushed deeply with the pain of it. It was Knudsen who was angry, but he said nothing. Corder still watched quizzically. I know that the title will stick. It is not ten minutes since the word was uttered, and we are already taking it up as David’s name. Randall uses it flagrantly, the rest of us as a matter of course, all except Knudsen. “Come on, Lucy,” he said just now when the first call for assembly sounded, and with his hand on David’s shoulder he went with him into the street, protectively, I think.

I shall close this and send it off. Again love from

Dear Mother:—

My tremendous postscript of this morning has somewhat led me out of the order of the day. I found myself awake at reveille, and rolled willingly out of bed. At the spigot, the one and only article of convenience at the lower end of the company street, I found a helpful comrade who gladly soused me from a bucket, and the day was begun. Back in the tent I found the fellows slowly coming to consciousness, all except that accurate and careful elder, Corder, who was dressing with great preciseness after a shower bath, and was calmly pleased at having no particular symptoms of old age to report. He and I have a valuable distinction as the only men in the squad with foresight enough to have been typhinated, worth while on this day when the others must submit to inoculation, if they want to run no risk on the hike. Then David’s shaving, as described. It was cold when we finally turned out, and our humane lieutenant, placing himself on a table at the head of the street, while we in open formation faced him, put us through setting-up exercises that warmed us sufficiently to brave the chilly mess-shacks for our breakfast.

It was there that David found me out. He first got my given name, Richard. Then he made me acknowledge that I was in Harvard, 1910. At the next pause he said, “My cousin Walter Farnham was in that class.” “Yes,” said I, and talked to the man on my other side. That stumped David, that anyone should know his cousin Walt and not be eager to talk about him. He did not approach the subject again till he and Knudsen and I and Corder were together in the tent. Then he put it right up to me. “Weren’t you my cousin’s best man?” “I was,” said I, and Sick Call having just blown, I went out, saying that I wanted to see who answered it. I know Knudsen and Corder looked at me hard; as for David, he cried out, “Oh, I beg your pardon!” I have reasoned out that with his delicate social perceptions and the stock of gossip that his mother supplies him with, he must have concluded that I was not in the mood to talk of weddings; but the real fact is that I don’t intend to be enlisted as his nurse. As for the other side of it, I know I can depend on him not to tell the others about Vera and me.

When I came back, it being about time for drill, I found him explaining that while of course he’d not had his “man” at college, he always used a barber there. The man, I’m sure, was with him at all other times. Then when we fell in I heard a fellow from another squad call David Lucy. That was Randall’s doing. Presently it will be all up and down the street. But Randall will be the only one to have any feeling about it. With the others now it is a matter of course, even with David himself.

Our morning’s work began on the drill-field, with its open drainage trenches yawning for our feet and its scattered mounds to stumble on. Gay work, this learning to walk in the right place, stand in the right way, toss your nine pound rifle about as if it were a straw, and all with but a moment or two for thought between the first order and the second. Even Pickle was silent this morning, intent like the rest of us on his job. We are all so green that, except for the occasional old-timer, no one was giving his neighbor any advice.

Then on a sudden we were tested. “All who have had any previous experience” were required to step one pace to the front. There were not many of them. Then “all who wish to be corporal,” or words to that effect. With about half the company I took the forward pace. The lieutenant separated these goats from the humbler sheep, sent us under a sergeant to another part of the field, and himself took charge of the remainder. The sergeant divided us up into twos and set us by turns to drilling each other, evidently to test our knowledge and our ability to give commands.

Pickle was my victim, or I was his. We eyed each other doubtfully. “You begin,” said I. “No, you,” retorted he. “Gee, what a gink I was to think I wanted to be corporal!” So I tackled the job; and of course, not being used to it, I made long pauses between the commands, gave them wrong, could not assume a proper military accent. It’s not so easy. I have heard, in the armory at Boston, a militia captain (captain, mind you!) give the command “Attention!” in three different ways, continually experimenting. So how could I, for the first time in my life, rap out my orders like a veteran? What we had to do was absurdly simple; but poor Pickle, when I balked, succeeded no better than I, so finally we fell to consulting each other about it and became idle, like other groups that we saw. Then came our way another pair, who being as experienced as we are green, speedily took us in charge and manhandled us almost as skilfully as the lieutenant. I presently saw our West Pointer observing the drilling groups, and with him another with two bars on his collar, the same erectness, and the same natural air of knowing his business. The two were like farmers judging cattle, disposing of each one with swiftness, taking rapid notes, and then herding us together into our original ranks for a final shaking down. The captain disappeared, but I hoped he was to be ours, for though I had had but sidewise glimpses of him, there seemed a fine frank openness about him that I liked.

Sure enough, in the afternoon he appeared in this wise. The company was assembled and marched out onto the highway, where we stood in double rank with our hats off, for a final sizing up. I heard a new voice, deep and powerful, at the further end of the line; then along he came with the lieutenant, rapidly sizing us up, counting us off, thrusting in a new man here and there, the new men to be our corporals. Randall disappeared into another squad, and we have now as corporal one of those two who drilled Pickle and me this morning. There are these others of us: Pickle, Corder, Knudsen, Lucy, Clay, a handsome young Southern medical student, and Reardon, a grocer’s clerk from a little town in Connecticut. Our corporal is Bannister, manager of the routing department, whatever that may be, of a tool-making establishment near Detroit. For a mixed crowd, of ages from grizzled Corder down to the very new graduate, what could be better? The captain, having put us all in place, called us to attention without any fuss, and stated that the new Number Four men were to be our squad leaders “until such time as other men proved themselves to be better.—So go to it,” he added grimly. Then he marched us back to the street, where the tents were all freshly numbered with chalk, and dismissed us to put our beds in the proper order.

Since military regulations