Driggs Wandel arrived surprisingly on the day the Germans were falling back to the Aisne, at a moment when most of the artillery fire was coming from the American side, when it was possible to sit on a sunny bank outside the battalion dugout breathing only stale souvenirs of last night's gas shells. "_Bon jour_, most powerful and disreputable of majors!" George held out his hand. "Bring any chocolate, Driggs? Sit down, you idiot. Jerry's never seen such a nice new uniform." Suddenly he lost his temper. Why the devil couldn't he get some pleasure out of this extraordinary reunion? Why did he have to greet Wandel as if he had seen him daily since their parting more than three years ago on a dusky pier in New York? He had heard that Wandel, with the declaration of war, had left the ambulance for a commission in the field artillery. He saw him now wearing the insignia of a general staff major. "Just attached to your corps headquarters," Wandel said. "Didn't want the job, would rather have been a fighting man with my pretty guns. Suppose some fool of a friend of the family brought the usual influence without consulting me." "Glad to see you, Driggs," George muttered, "although I don't seem able to tell you so. How did you get here?" "Guide from regimental headquarters. Wanted to see how the submerged heroes live. Nasty, noisy, smelly spot to be heroic in." "A picnic to-day." "I've always suspected," Wandel said, "that picnics were unhealthy." "Better have come," George grinned, "any other day we've been here the past few weeks." Wandel laughed. "Don't think I didn't pick my day. The general staff takes no unnecessary risks. Tell me, my George, when did you shave last? When did you wash your pretty face last? When did you take your swank clothes off last?" "I think when I was a very little boy," George sighed. Wandel became abruptly serious, turned so, perhaps, by a large shell fragment, still warm, which he had picked up. As he fingered it he stared at George. "I know," George said, "that I point a moral, but even little boys would be glad to be made clean if they got like this. Don't rub it in." "To the contrary," Wandel said, thoughtfully, "I'm going back over a lot of years. I'm remembering how that most extraordinary man, Freshman George Morton, looked. I'm thinking that I've always been right about you." The warm sun, the diminution of racket, this sudden companionship, had drawn George a little from his indifferent, half-dazed condition. He, too, could look back, and without discomfort. On the Vesle it was only death that counted. Birth didn't amount to a hill of beans, or money, or education, except in that it made a man an officer. So George answered frankly: "All along you've guessed a lot about me, Driggs." "Known, George." "Would you mind telling me how?"