"Hard lines--especially just now!" the soldier would murmur.

"Yes, isn't it?" Doggie would answer.

Doggie never questioned his physical incapacity. His mother had brought
him up to look on himself as a singularly frail creature, and the idea
was as real to him as the war. He went about pitying himself and seeking
pity.

The months passed. The soldiers moved away from Durdlebury, and Doggie
was left alone in his house. He felt solitary and restless. News came
from Oliver that he had accepted an infantry commission and was in
France. "A month of this sort of thing," he wrote, "would make our dear
old Doggie sit up." Doggie sighed. If only he had been blessed with
Oliver's constitution!

One morning Briggins, his chauffeur, announced that he could stick it
out no longer and was going to enlist. Then Doggie remembered a talk he
had had with one of the young officers, who had expressed astonishment
at his not being able to drive a car.

"I shouldn't have the nerve," he had replied. "My nerves are all
wrong--and I shouldn't have the strength to change tires and things."

But now Doggie was confronted by the necessity of driving his own car,
for chauffeurs were no longer to be had. To his amazement, he found that
he did not die of nervous collapse when a dog crossed the road in front
of the automobile, and that the fitting of detachable wheels did not
require the strength of a Hercules. The first time he took Peggy out
driving, he swelled with pride.

"I'm so glad you can do something!" she said, after a silence.

Although the girl was as kind as ever, Doggie had noticed of late a
curious reserve in her manner. Conversation did not flow easily. She had
fits of abstraction, from which, when rallied, she roused herself with
an effort. Finally, one day, Peggy asked him blankly why he did not
enlist.

Doggie was horrified. "I'm not fit," he said, "I've no constitution. I'm
an impossibility."

"You thought you had nerves until you learned to drive the car," she
answered. "Then you discovered that you hadn't. You fancy you've a weak
heart. Perhaps if you walked thirty miles a day, you would discover that
you hadn't that, either. And so with the rest of it."

He swung round toward her. "Do you think I'm shamming so as to get out
of serving in the army?" he demanded.

"Not consciously. Unconsciously, I think you are. What does your doctor
say?"

Doggie was taken aback. He had no doctor, having no need for one. He