Notwithstanding the General's assurances that he had eaten hours ago he sat down, unable to withstand the delicious whiffs rising from the coffee urn, and the smell of crispy toast browning in the electric toaster.
Grapefruit and eggs and commissary bacon (which is by all odds the best on earth) and that same before-mentioned toast, and coffee, and orange marmalade.
Bill, who had never imagined the time would come when he would be taking breakfast with a real General, was nevertheless so hungry and so happy that he forgot rank and everything else. The General did too, it seemed, because he sat and sipped, and ate, and ate, and questioned the boys and finally wanted the story of the flight from the very first instead of getting it tail-end first in little pieces.
Bill told his side of the flight, and Ernest told his, and together they told about the landing in the farmer's field, and the amusing people and about Webby, the "pig-headed" and trustworthy one.
And then the General and Major smoked as though there were no dispatches for the General to read and no classes waiting for the Major—in fact, as though there was no military discipline at all. But as the General said, what was the use of being a General, anyway, if it didn't give you some privileges?
But at last the General jingled away, happy and quite full up with delicious coffee and things, and thinking Major Sherman was a lucky dog anyhow to have that little wife and fine boy. Before he left he gave an order for a guard for the airplane standing so calmly in the small field.
Close on his departure came the ambulance, and Major Sherman went off with Ernest to the Hospital for an X-ray of his broken arm.
Bill and his mother were alone.
Together they hustled the dishes into the kitchen and cleared up the living-room. Then Mrs. Sherman sat down in her favorite corner on the couch and Bill threw himself beside her with his tousled head in her lap.
"Goodness, Billy, you certainly have grown!" she said. "Your legs trail way off the end, and when you went to school you didn't reach to the edge."