warmed us sufficiently to brave
the chilly mess-shacks for our breakfast.

It was there that David found me out. He first got my given name,
Richard. Then he made me acknowledge that I was in Harvard, 1910. At the
next pause he said, "My cousin Walter Farnham was in that class." "Yes,"
said I, and talked to the man on my other side. That stumped David, that
anyone should know his cousin Walt and not be eager to talk about him. He
did not approach the subject again till he and Knudsen and I and Corder
were together in the tent. Then he put it right up to me. "Weren't you my
cousin's best man?" "I was," said I, and Sick Call having just blown, I
went out, saying that I wanted to see who answered it. I know Knudsen and
Corder looked at me hard; as for David, he cried out, "Oh, I beg your
pardon!" I have reasoned out that with his delicate social perceptions
and the stock of gossip that his mother supplies him with, he must have
concluded that I was not in the mood to talk of weddings; but the real
fact is that I don't intend to be enlisted as his nurse. As for the other
side of it, I know I can depend on him not to tell the others about Vera
and me.

When I came back, it being about time for drill, I found him explaining
that while of course he'd not had his "man" at college, he always used a
barber there. The man, I'm sure, was with him at all other times. Then
when we fell in I heard a fellow from another squad call David Lucy. That
was Randall's doing. Presently it will be all up and down the street. But
Randall will be the only one to have any feeling about it. With the
others now it is a matter of course, even with David himself.

Our morning's work began on the drill-field, with its open drainage
trenches yawning for our feet and its scattered mounds to stumble on. Gay
work, this learning to walk in the right place, stand in the right way,
toss your nine pound rifle about as if it were a straw, and all with but
a moment or two for thought between the first order and the second. Even
Pickle was silent this morning, intent like the rest of us on his job. We
are all so green that, except for the occasional old-timer, no one was
giving his neighbor any advice.

Then on a sudden we were tested. "All who have had any previous
experience" were required to step one pace to the front. There were not
many of them. Then "all who wish to be corporal," or words to that
effect. With about half the company I took the forward pac