Forsythe! Just a moment."

Maybe the same thought struck him as had come to me, which is that
helpin' Miss Jane give a blowout to near seven hundred soldiers wouldn't
be any rest-cure stunt. She's rated at about ninety horse-power herself,
when she's speeded up, and anybody that happens to be on her staff has
got to keep movin' in high. They'd have to be ready to tackle anything
that turned up, too.

But, to hear Mr. Robert explain it to Forsythe, you'd think it was just
that his fame as an arranger of floral center-pieces had spread until
Miss Gorman has decided nobody else would do.

"Although, heaven knows, I never suspected you could be really useful,
Forsythe," says Mr. Robert. "But if Miss Jane thinks you'd be a
help----"

"Oh, I am sure Mr. Hurd would be the very one," puts in Miss Gorman.

"At last!" says Forsythe, strikin' a pose. "My virtues are about to be
discovered. I shall be delighted to assist you, Miss Gorman, in any
way."

"Tut, tut, Forsythe!" says Mr. Robert. "Don't be too reckless. Miss Jane
might take you at your word."

"Go on. Slander me," says Forsythe. "Say that, when enlisted in a noble
cause, I am a miserable shirker."

"Indeed, I shouldn't believe a word of it, even if I had time to listen
to him," declares Miss Jane. "And I must be at the camp within an hour.
I shall need one of you young men now. Let me see. Suppose I take this
one--Torchy, isn't it? Get your coat. I'll not promise to have you back
for dinner, but I'll try. Thank you so much, Robert."

And then it was a case of goin' on from there. Whew! I've sort of had
the notion now and then, when I've been operatin' with Old Hickory
Ellins at the Corrugated Trust on busy days, that I was some rapid
private sec. But say, havin' followed Miss Jane Gorman through them
dinner preliminaries, I know better.

While that French chauffeur of hers is rollin' us down Long Island at
from forty to fifty miles per hour, she has her note-book out and is
pumpin' me full of things I'm expected to remember--what train the
chef's gang is comin' on, how the supplies are to be carted over, who to
see about knockin' up a stage for the cabaret talent, and where the
buntin' has been ordered. I borrows a pad and pencil, and wishes I knew
shorthand.

By the time we lands at the camp, though, I have a fair idea of the job
she's tackled; and while she's havin' an interview with the C. O. I
starts explorin' the scene of the banquet. First off I finds