here was always tripe for Sunday mornings, and
corned beef and cabbage on Mondays, and Monday was wash-day!

"I wish you could hear him tell what wash-day meant to him. It is a
sort of poem, the way he puts it. He doesn't know that it is poetry,
though Vachell Lindsay would, or Masters, or some of those fellows.

"It seems that he used to help his mother, because he was a strong
little fellow, and could turn the wringer, and they would get up very
early because he had to go to school, and in the spring and summer they
washed out of doors, under a tree in the yard, and his mother's eyes
were bright and her cheeks were red and her arms were white, and she
was always laughing. There's a memory for a man on the battlefield,
dearest, a healthy, hearty memory of the day's work of a boy, and of a
bright-eyed mother, and of a good dinner at the end of hours of toil.

"Perhaps with such a mother it isn't surprising that Tommy has made so
much of himself. He has aspirations far beyond driving some other
man's car, and if he keeps on he'll have a little flivver of his own
before he knows it--when the war ends, and he can strike out, with his
energy at the boiling point.

"There are a lot of men who have belonged not to the idle rich, but to
the idle poor, and the discipline of this life is just the thing for
them as it is for me. It rather contradicts the kindergarten idea of
play as a preparation for life. These busy men, forced to be busy, are
a thousand times more self-respecting than if left to lead the listless
lives that were theirs before their country called them. I wonder if,
after all, Kipling isn't right, and that the hump and hoof and haunch
of it all isn't obedience? Not slavish obedience, but obedience
founded on a knowledge of one's place and value in the pack?"

Jean, striving to follow Derry's point of view, found herself
floundering.

"I am glad you like it, but I don't see how you can. And you mustn't
say that you've always been a Tin Soldier on a shelf. I won't have it.
And you have played the game of life just as bravely as Tommy Tracy,
only your problems were different--. And if you can't remember wash
days you can remember other days--. But I like to have you tell me
about it, because I can see you, listening to Tommy and laughing at
him. I adore your laugh, Derry, though I shouldn't be telling you,
should I--? I have pasted the picture you sent me of you and Tommy in
my memory book a