The Torch Bearer’s eyes were wet. So were the soldier’s. The last word had been said. All she could do was to put out a tremulous little hand and touch his understandingly. He wanted very much to stoop and kiss it. But he didn’t. For he remembered that, though he wore his Plattsburg shoulder-bars, yet they were hardly more than Boy and Girl. And up to the threshold of this unifying war-time their lives had not run in parallel channels, as did that of the Junior Aide, who was an admiral’s son, for instance.
So he only covered the girlish hand warmly with his own--held it nested for a moment as that of a comrade with whom one has shared the secret trail, the rainbow trail, that leads into the unseen.
And he hid another, and very special, picture away in his soldier’s heart to brighten those moments when, riding endless miles on a troop train, “hitting the hay” at midnight or vegetating in mud until he felt himself sprouting, he might miss those things which make life hum.
CHAPTER IV
A WANDERING POWDER-PUFF
“That’s Iver! Oh! no distance, nor trench, could prevent my recognizing him.”
The cry of rapt identification came from Iver Davenport’s seventeen-year-old sister, Sara.
“Yes, one can single out his shoulders at a glance--an inch higher than those of any other man in his company--Lieutenant O. Pips!”
It was Colonel Deering who amusedly spoke, president of the Board of Directors of the Craig Steel Works, retired colonel of a national guard regiment, and father of two very attractive daughters, Olive and Sybil, Camp Fire Girls, of whom only one was present here, on the sear skirts of Gas Valley, the outskirts of the great military training-camp, where the army chemists of the Gas Defense Division were again holding their so-called “classes” initiating soldiers into an experience with poison gas.
“Oh! I’m so glad that we’ll have a chance to see him again--Iver--before he goes over. I didn’t let him know that we were coming to-day; ’twill be quite a surprise when he stalks up out of the trenches--and unmasks.” Again the eager exclamation burst from Sara, a kindling flame of excitement, as standing on the edge of the camp trenches, behind the skirting sand-bags, she craned her young neck over, to gaze along a narrow earth-cut, six feet deep, to a curving trench-bay in which her brother was stationed with a few other officers--all still without their masks--to undergo an initiation on his own account.