“You ought to have a sled, Little Girl,” he told me. “Well why don’t the engineers make me one?” I unthinkingly retorted. “Sure and they will!” he answered. Since then I have gone in terror. If the sergeant should have that sled made for me, as he likely will, why I shall have to use it. And as for starting down Bourmont Hill on a sled, I would just as soon attempt Niagara in a barrel. Ever since Christmas it has been cold, bitter cold. At the canteen I wash my chocolate cups with the dishpan on the stove in order to keep the water fluid; hanging the dish-cloth up to dry at the corner of the counter, in a few minutes I find it stiff with ice. At night the ink-bottles freeze and then burst, spreading black ruin all around them. What to do with the still unfrozen ones is a vexing problem; I might I suppose take them home each night with me and sleep with them underneath my pillow. In the little umbrella-stand stoves the green wood, which comes in so freshly cut, that the logs have ivy still unwithered twined around them, simply will not burn, and the stoves will smoke, _mon Dieu_, how they will smoke! Every time the wind blows, the stove-pipes, secured shakily by the canvas walls, become disjointed, parting company with the stoves, and then the clouds pour forth as if we housed a captive Etna. In the barracks the boys tell me their shoes freeze to the floor over night. They have taken to sleeping two in one bunk for the sake of warmth. Blanket-stealing has been elevated to the rank of a deadly crime. Even the problem of keeping warm by day is an acute one. The boys who have money to burn are spending it to purchase extravagantly priced fur-lined gloves. The boys who can’t afford them, wait until they see somebody lay a pair down. The taking of baths has become an act of heroism. “Took a bath today,” growls a lad. “Think I ought to get a service stripe for that.” While another boy grins; “Gee but I’m feelin’ rich! Took a bath today and found two pair o’socks and three shirts I didn’t know I had!” “Now ain’t you sorry you cut off the bottom of your coat!” a long-coated doughboy taunts an abbreviated one. “I told you not to. First, you’re out of luck at Reveille ’cause the Top Kick can see you ain’t got no leggin’s on. An’ now before you know it, you’ll be havin’ chilblains in your knees.” “You should worry,” growls back the short-coated one. “I couldn’t stand that thing flappin’ ’round my feet no longer. An’ most of the other guys done it too.” Which is true. Before this cold spell set in, half the boys in the company had taken a slice off the bottom of their overcoats, a procedure which leads to an odd effect _en masse_ as each has chosen his own length which means everything from knees to ankles, and drives the exasparated Loots to demanding; “D’you want to know what you look like? Well, you look like _hell_!”