Military Training Camp for Business and Professional Men (Plattsburgh, N.Y.); Military education -- Fiction; New York (State) -- Fiction
Nobody in the squad asked me a question. Young David's face was a study
in ignorance, but of course it was he who let the others know that I was
to be let alone. From his squad Randall began to throw remarks at me, but
Pickle turned on him very savagely. "Oh, yap, yap, yap!" Captain Kirby
when he went by looked at me very intently, and I looked straight back at
him. But I couldn't look at any of the other fellows. Curious that a man
feels so self-conscious. You women know how to pretend, but few of us
seem to manage it.
Yet I wasn't sorry it came about so. The squad stands together on
anything that happens to any one of us. I felt proud to belong to it.
When we marched back and had got to the main road again, the captain
disappeared; it was the lieutenant who got us to camp and dismissed us
there. I knew where the captain went when after this evening's mess I was
ordered to go to his tent. He was writing there, and turned round when I
_scratched_, which is a little way we have in the army, as there is no
way of knocking. I saluted.
"Oh, Mr. Godwin," said he, returning my salute. "Miss Wadsworth sends a
message. You're to come to see her this evening, after general
conference."
"I was planning to go to company conference, sir," said I.
I suppose she knew I would say that, for he was ready for me. "She made
it an order, Mr. Godwin," said he, very gravely.
"Very well, sir," said I, saluted again, and left him writing--or
pretending to. I suppose she's got him, like the rest of them.
When I called on Vera we were very proper, and very old-friendly, and
radically different in our ideas, as it seems destined for us to be. I
told her how much I liked the training, and she said how much she
disapproved of it, and so we passed the time. Once she insisted on
telling me all about what her sister Frances is doing now. Then officers
began to come in, and to chat with the old colonel in the next room, and
glance through the door at us, as if saying, "When is that dam rookie
going to go?" So I left. It was nearly time, anyway, for me to be tucked
up in bed like a good little boy, and leave the field to my betters.
DICK.
PRIVATE GODWIN'S DAILY LETTER
Saturday evening, Sept. 16.
At the company tent.
DEAR MOTHER:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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