t. It
was a short one. Off the refreshment room was a great, gracious
comfortable room all deep chairs, and soft rugs, and hangings, and
pictures and shaded lights. All about sat pairs and groups of sailors
and girls, talking, and laughing and consuming vast quantities of cake.
And in the centre of just such a group sat Gunner Moran, lolling at his
ease in a rosy velvet-upholstered chair. His little finger was crookt
elegantly over his cup. A large and imposing square of chocolate cake in
the other hand did not seem to cramp his gestures as he talked. Neither
did the huge bites with which he was rapidly demolishing it seem in the
least to stifle his conversation. Four particularly pretty girls, and
two matrons surrounded him. And as Tyler and Miss Cunningham approached
him he was saying, "Well, it's got so I can't sleep in anything _but_ a
hammick. Yessir! Why, when I was fifteen years old I was--" He caught
Tyler's eye. "Hello!" he called, genially. "Meet me friend." This to the
bevy surrounding him. "I was just tellin' these ladies here--"

And he was off again. All the tales that he told were not necessarily
true. But that did not detract from their thrill. Moran's audience grew
as he talked. And he talked until he and Tyler had to run all the way to
the Northwestern station for the last train that would get them on the
Station before shore leave expired. Moran, on leaving, shook hands like
a presidential candidate.

"I never met up with a finer bunch of ladies," he assured them, again
and again. "Sure I'm comin' back again. Ask me. I've had a elegant time.
Elegant. I never met a finer bunch of ladies."

They did not talk much in the train, he and Tyler. It was a sleepy lot
of boys that that train carried back to the Great Central Naval Station.
Tyler was undressed and in his hammock even before Moran, the expert. He
would not have to woo sleep to-night. Finally Moran, too, had swung
himself up to his precarious nest and relaxed with a tired, happy grunt.

Quiet again brooded over the great dim barracks. Tyler felt himself
slipping off to sleep, deliciously. She would be there next Saturday.
Her first name, she had said, was Myrtle. An awful pretty name for a
girl. Just about the prettiest he had ever heard. Her folks invited
jackies to dinner at the house nearly every Sunday. Maybe, if they gave
him thirty-six hours' leave next time--

"Hey, Sweetheart!" sounded in a hissing whisper from Moran's hammock.

"Wha