Twenty-three and a half hours' leave — Text and Context

es me,” went on Sergeant Gray meditatively. “It’s about a week now since he told me I was a disgrace to the uniform. How’d I know I was going to sneeze in his horse’s ear just as he was climbing on?”

“Suffering snakes!” cried the second mess sergeant. “Go to bed! You’re delirious.”

Sergeant Gray put a dimple in the girl’s cheek and surveyed it critically.

“Yep. The old boy’s crazy about me,” he ruminated aloud. “Asked me the other day if I thought I’d fight the Germans as hard as I fought work.”

“Probably be asking you to breakfast,” observed the second mess sergeant, beginning on a new sheet. “He’s in the habit of having noncoms to eat with him.”

The subtlety of this passed over Sergeant Gray’s head. He was carefully adding a small ear to his drawing, an ear which resembled an interrogation point. But a seed had been dropped on the fertile soil of his mind. He finished, yawned again and grinned.

“All right,” he said. “_C’est la guerre_, as the old boy says. I’ll lay you two dollars to one I eat breakfast with him within a month.” His imagination grew with the thought. “Wait! I’ll eat bran muffins with him at breakfast within a month. How’s that?”

“It’s simple damn foolishness,” observed the second mess sergeant. “I’ll take you if you’ll go to bed and lemme alone.”

“‘Lemme,’” observed Sergeant Gray, “is probably Princeton. In Harvard we——”

But the second mess sergeant had picked up the inkwell and was fingering it purposefully.

“All right, dear old thing,” said Sergeant Gray.

And he rose, stretching his more than six feet to the uttermost. Then he made his way through the rows of beds to the sergeant’s corner, and removing his blouse, his breeches, his shoes and his puttees was ready for sleep. His last waking thought was of his wager.

“A bran muffin with the Old Man!” he chuckled. “A bran muffin! A——”

Something heavy landed on his chest with a great thump, and after turning round once or twice settled itself there for the remainder of the night. Lying on his back, so as to give his dog the only possible berth on the tiny bed, Sergeant Gray, all-American athlete and prime young devil of the Headquarters Troop, went fast asleep.

Reveille the next morning, however, found him grouchy. He kicked the dog off his legs, to which the animal had retired, and reaching under his pillow brought out his whistle. He blew a shrill blast on it. The lower squad room groaned, turned over, closed its eyes. He blew again.

“Roll out!” he yelled in stentorian tones. “R-r-roll out, you dirty horsemen!”

Then he closed his eyes again and went peacefully to sleep. He dreamed that the general was carrying a plate of bran muffins to his bedside, and behind him was a pretty girl with coffee and an ear like an interrogation point. He wakened to find breakfast over and the cook in a bad temper.

“Be a sport, Watt,” he pleaded. “Just a cup of coffee, anyhow.”

“I fed your dog for you. That’s all you get.”

“I can’t eat the dog.”

“Go on out,” said the cook. “This ain’t the Waldorf-Astoria. Nor Childs’ neither.”

“Some day, on the field of honor,” said Sergeant Gray, “you will lie wounded, Watt. You will beg for a cup of water, and I shall refuse it, saying——”

“Give him something to get rid of him,” the cook instructed his helper.

And Sergeant Gray was fed. As he drank his coffee he reflected as to his wager of the night before. It appealed to his sporting instinct but not to his reason. He had exactly as much chance to eat a bran muffin with the general as he had to sign peace terms with the Kaiser.

He drank his tepid coffee and surveyed his finger nails disconsolately. The faces had only partially disappeared during his morning’s ablution.

“This is the life, Watt!” he said to the cook. “Wine, women and song, eh?”

But the cook was cutting his finger nails, preparatory to morning inspection.

Now the ink pictures on Sergeant Gray’s finger nails had a certain significance. They bore, to be exact, a certain faint resemblance to a young lady whose photograph was now concealed against inspection in the sergeant’s condiment can. The young lady in question had three days before wired the sergeant to this effect:

“Married Bud Palmer yesterday. Please wish me happiness.”

To which, concealing a deep hurt, the sergeant had replied: “Praying earnestly for you both.”