Then--ah! we
expected this! Frothingham, I, Knudsen, found ourselves marching alone,
the other men out of touch with us, having drawn away to the right and
left. I heard my mates grumble, I knew what I was to do: spread myself to
occupy all possible space and march straight onward, for--there! they
were back again, surging from the left and right, back in their proper
places, and the line had not really broken. "Good!" murmurs Knudsen.
"Hold it!" exhorts the captain over his shoulder. Then "Eyes right!" and
thus saluting as we passed the major we could see, or thought we saw, a
perfect line. "Front!" We swept on; we listened. The ladies had clapped
the first two companies, but there was no applause for us. Had it then
been bad after all?

Back to the street we marched, and formed in line. Lieutenant Pendleton
came and spoke to the captain, then walked away smiling. "The lieutenant
says you did well," said the captain briefly. But he was so short that we
thought him grumpy, especially since the lieutenant had never before been
seen to give us anything else than his little ironical smile. Yet at
company conference, in the evening, one of us ventured to ask the captain
if we really had done badly. "No," said he. "I was pleased with you. You
did well. The major said you did best." So the lack of applause meant
nothing. I saw men whose home affairs are so large that this might
properly be small to them, look at each other in relief.

Today I got a letter from Walt Farnham about his cousin Lucy. He says: "I
know you won't baby him. The camp ought to do him good. It was I that put
the idea into his head, but his father, afraid that he might back out at
the last minute, or not stick it through, has promised him an auto of his
own when he gets back, anything up to twelve thousand dollars. How can
even Plattsburg save such a boy?"

And Vera is after him now. After conference I was writing in the company
tent, the inner one, while the captain still talked outside to half a
dozen men. To my surprise a bell rang behind me, and while I sat looking
at a curious instrument on the post, wondering if it were a telephone,
the captain came in, took from it a strange receiver-transmitter, and
spoke into it. I heard Vera plainly answering, and the captain, saying
"Mr. Godwin is right here," gave me the thing to hold. She said "Oh,
Dick!" so plainly that of course the captain heard it as he went out
again. Vera told me that Mrs. Farnham ha