“When you put it the way you did, about it meaning everything in the world to you, I couldn’t turn you down,” the boy explained, moving about the tent in a daze. He walked to the little stand that held the washbasin and cleaned the oil and grease off of his hands and then brushed his hair. As he gazed into the small mirror just above the washbasin, his eyes rested upon a snapshot of Elinor that Panama had stuck there. Confronted by the magnetic features of the girl, everything within him revolted against the unfairness of it all. He swung about, ready to announce his definite refusal to participate in the scheme, only to come face to face with the sergeant who was standing behind him, watching eagerly. “Go on, now,” Panama urged. “I’ll be waitin’ right here for her answer.” His words again changed the boy’s demeanor, breaking down the last barriers of objection. “Don’t keep me waitin’ too long, will ya?” Williams begged. “Hurry on your way now!” Lefty stopped when he reached the front of the tent, lighting upon a perfect alibi to defer the painful ordeal he was about to face. “Wait a minute,” he said. “This is no time to propose to a girl. You can’t ask her a serious thing like that just when you please. You’ve got to have things right. You know, moonlight, atmosphere, music and all that bunk. I’ll ask her to-night. What do you say?” “There you are! That’s the difference between us,” Panama boasted with profound admiration for his friend’s mental capacity. “If it was me, I’d run right over now and she’d probably hand me the bum’s rush! Don’t you see how much I need your help? That’s what that education stuff does for a guy!” “All right, all right, now let’s forget about it until to-night then,” Lefty said impatiently. “I said I’d do it, so it’s as good as done!” Panama shrugged his shoulders and walked over to his cot, disappointed with the boy’s unsympathetic attitude. Suddenly something struck him and he looked at the other man with a grave expression of doubt. “Say, Lef!” “Now what’s the matter?” “Nothin’, only—well, suppose she does say the word,” the sergeant speculated as he scratched his head, “then what am I supposed to do?” “Run over, take her in your arms and ask her when the day is to be!” The simple man’s face became livid white as he moved from one foot to the other nervously. “Gee, I can’t do that!” he protested, “I ain’t got nerve enough! Couldn’t you ask her that too?” “Whatinell you expect me to do,” Lefty roared, completely losing his patience. “Marry her for you?” CHAPTER XVI Elinor stood by the narrow window in the dingy, one-room hut that she and Grace Hayes (another nurse) made habitable after an entire day of scrubbing and cleaning on their hands and knees until their backs were nearly broken. A blue cotton curtain, some pictures, a few ornaments, bought in town and some brightly colored cretonne pillows gave the little place a feminine touch and a homey atmosphere.