"Give the rooks time to eat their meal in comfort," ordered a sergeant gruffly. "Have you forgotten the day, Fowler, when you were the greenest rook that the Thirty-fourth ever had?"
"I never was a rook," retorted Fowler.
"You never got beyond being one," retorted a corporal. "Don't mind this chin-bugler, lads. He doesn't know any better."
Hal was paying attention strictly to the meal before him. A good-sized piece of steak and a dish of baked potatoes had come his way, and he enjoyed them keenly. The men of this battalion had a first class commissary officer and lived well.
"You've visiting cards with you, of course?" continued Fowler, after a few moments.
"No," Noll admitted.
"Why, rook, you'll need cards. You've got to call on the K. O. (commanding officer) after breakfast. But we'll fix you out. I'll lend you my pack. The jack of clubs is the one you want to send in to the K. O. Then he'll know 'tis a husky lad that has honored the Thirty-fourth by joining."
"You'll live most of the time at the guard-house, if you take Fowler for your authority on doughboy life," broke in a quiet soldier across the table.
"More likely the happy house would be our address," laughed Hal.
"Doughboy" is the term applied to an infantry soldier. Hal and Noll, being in an infantry regiment, had thereby become doughboys. The "happy house" is the part of a military hospital where mild cases of insanity are confined.