“Lucky I’m not dependent on eggs for food!” he mused and, mistaking the hand in which he held the doughnut, bit vigorously into his cigarette. Nevertheless his spirits grew lower as the day went on. It had occurred to him that all the fellows he had counted on for sisters would be in the Army, like himself. He cut off girls from his list, on that discovery; but food and theatres remained. He reflected rather defiantly that he could have a good time without girls; and then considered that a chap who lied to himself was in the class with a fellow who cheated at solitaire. The day was hot. Kindly women at stations passed in sandwiches and coffee, and the troop, with the eternal appetite of twenty-odd, gorged themselves and cheered in overhanging pyramids from the windows. The corporals on guard between the cars slept on seats improvised of saddlebags, and between naps rolled cigarettes. And the noncoms in their corner inveigled the porter to a game of craps, and took from him his week’s accumulation of tips. At the end of the game Sergeant Gray took out his money and counted it. “Looks like you’d be able to give the Old Man a right good breakfast,” observed the stable sergeant. “Oh, it’s to be his breakfast,” said Sergeant Gray recklessly. “It is, is it?” The stable sergeant regarded him with admiration. “Want to bet on it?” “Just as you like,” was the cool answer. “Look here,” said the stable sergeant, aware of an audience. “I’ll lay you five to one you don’t breakfast with him at all; ten to one you don’t do it on his invitation, and”—he hesitated for effect—“twenty to one you don’t do it within a week.” “Good!” said Sergeant Gray, and laid some bills on his knee. “I’d wager I could pull the Crown Prince’s nose at those odds. Then if I do breakfast with him within a week on his invitation you’ll owe me a hundred and seventy-five dollars.” “I wish my money was as safe in the bank.” But the stable sergeant was vaguely uncomfortable. Those college chaps had a way of putting things over. He went out on the platform and stared uneasily at the flying scenery. Sergeant Gray folded his new uniform under the mattress of his berth that night. It was bad for the collar, but he did it lest worse befall it. He suspected the troop of jealous designs on it. But he could not fold himself away so easily, and lay diagonally, with two Number Eleven Double E feet in the aisle. At four in the morning he wakened, the cause being a dream that he had for some hours been walking in a puddle and needed to change his shoes. Still only half awake, he looked at his feet, to perceive that some wag had neatly blackened them with shoe polish from the porter’s closet. He immediately reached under his pillow for his whistle and blew a shrill blast on it, followed by a stentorian roar. “Roll out, you dirty horsemen! R-r-roll out!” he yelled.