“I don’t want to,” I told him. “I can’t do justice to the subject and Vyvy is entitled to hear from you herself.... I’ll tell you: you put your name and rank and everything at the top of the first page, don’t you?” “Surely.” “Well, you write to Auntie and inclose a letter to Vyvy. I’ll write to Auntie and tell her to cut the top from the first page of your letter, then forward the rest to Vyvy. My mail isn’t inspected half the time and no one would think anything anyway.” “Nope,” he insisted. “Vyvy’d wonder why the letter didn’t come direct.” “Well—then—you can write to me without having your letters censored. Send your letters to Vyvy via me. What’s wrong with that?” “Nothing, I guess. I’ll do it.” So now that was off my hands and my head felt a little easier on all scores, for I told Leon all about the Captain and Jay-Jay and the Madame and everything and he was prepared for whatever might happen now. I almost told him to look up the Madame—but I just couldn’t do it: it didn’t seem decent to fix up a loving party for your own brother.... He would write to me from Paris, and we’d meet again as soon as possible. Ben and I didn’t get back to our barracks till ten and it was twelve before we turned in. Esky was sick. We didn’t know what was the matter with him, so didn’t know what to do for him. Probably be all right by morning, but I hated to see him sick. He looked and acted too pitiful: I couldn’t sleep all night if he was going to be prowling around and sticking his nose into my ear every few minutes. But that was just what he did when he felt funny. Ben was asleep. Esky stuck his nose into his ear and Ben must have been dreaming, for he mumbled something about “you know my weak spot, honey.” Maybe he thought it was that Captain of W.A.A.C.’s. —3— Monday was a terrible day. The General worked me like a nigger. Esky was sick and Ben said he’d been poisoned by that meat Pierre gave him yesterday. When I told the General about it, he told Ben to take the pup and cart him out to a veterinary in the car. Pretty special for a dog to ride to a veterinary in a General’s car. Ben came back to report that the vet didn’t know whether he could pull him through or not, said he was probably poisoned, that he might go blind.... I felt too terrible to think about it. We got some medicine and Ben and I took turns all night getting up to give it to him. The poor pup! He just lay around and looked miserable and threw up everything he ate and a lot of blood, too. —4— The next day it looked as if Esky couldn’t possibly get well again. He didn’t walk around at all—just lay there on his side and breathed so awfully hard that it made me want to cry just to watch him. When I patted his head he opened his eyes lazily and gave his tail a couple of feeble wags.