“He thinks he’s so doggone good himself that he has to pry into other people’s business and get them in wrong. It beats me how he ever got to be a captain—a prim old fossil like him!”
“It might puzzle some people to know how you got your commission, Harry. You’re no fossil, of course, but you’re no angel, either, and there are some things in your career that aren’t exactly laid down in military manuals.”
“Oh, my uncle Henry looked after my commission. It was a cinch! He thinks the sun rises and sets in me, and he had no idea how he perjured himself when he put me through. Why, I’ve got some of the biggest men in the country for my backers, and wouldn’t they lie awake at night if they knew! Oh Boy! I thought I’d croak when I read some of those recommendations, they fairly gushed with praise. You’d have died laughing, Bob, if you had read them. They had such adjectives as ‘estimable, moral, active, efficient,’ and one went so far as to say that I was equally distinguished in college in scholarship and athletics! Some stretch of imagination, eh, what?”
The two laughed loudly over this.
“And the best of it is,” continued the first lieutenant, “the poor boob believed it was all true!”
“But your college records, Harry, how could they get around those? Or didn’t they look you up?”
“Oh, mother fixed that all up. She sent the college a good fat check to establish a new scholarship or something.”
“Lucky dog!” sighed his friend. “Now I’m just the other way. I never try to put anything over but I get caught, and nobody ever tried to cover up my tracks for me when I got gay!”
“You worry too much, Bobby, and you never take a chance. Now I——”
The front door of the car opened and shut with a slam, and a tall young fellow with a finely cut face and wearing workman’s clothes entered. He gave one quick glance down the car as though he was searching for someone, and came on down the aisle. The sight of him stopped the boast on young Wainwright’s tongue, and an angry flush grew, and rolled up from the top of his immaculate olive-drab collar to his close, military hair-cut.