“Thick! So thick that you could drink it, if--if it wasn’t so horridly pea-soupy and pungent, eh?” laughed another girl, who stood next to the tallest one, their shoulders touching. “It’s as dense as the fog our Captain Andy used to tell us about; the fog out on the fishing banks--Grand Banks--which he declared was so thick at times that the poor fish didn’t know when they were atop of the water; they went on swimming up in the fog. Don’t you remember, Olive?” she asked as she merrily nudged the older, dark-eyed girl who wore the Torch Bearer’s insignia of logs, flame, and smoke--an insignia that stood for a high-beating heart, as ready and eager to do its share in this moment of world conflict, as that typified by the silver bars on the lieutenant’s shoulders and the cross-gun on his khaki collar.
It was he, Lieutenant Iver Davenport, or, to come down to detail, Lieutenant Iver O. P. Davenport, who, thanks to his middle initials and that keen silver of scrutiny between his narrowed eyelids, was christened in his infantry company “O Pips,” the camp nickname for an observation post, he who answered, with brotherly freedom, glancing over the Torch Bearer’s shoulder at the brown-eyed girl beyond her.
“Yes, sis, it’s as thick as the fogged-fish yarn, or as the fabled fog that the half-breed pathfinder who was attached to our Boy Scout troop used to tell of when he’d begin quite modestly that he ‘hadn’t seen fog ver’ tick--non--only one time he see fog so tick dat one mans try for drink eet an’ mos’ choke hisself; and wen dey take out dat fog wat dat mans try for drink, dey take dat for make broomstick--yaas!’ Oh! you couldn’t get ahead of Toiney; he who--was it three summers ago?--pulled one of your Camp Fire Group out of dangerous quicksands, eh?”
“Yes, that will be three years ago next August and we’re going to camp in that same region of white sand-dunes this coming summer, too, under the spell of the Green Com Moon,” returned the boy-officer’s sister, Sara Davenport, named by the Council Fire Sesooā, the Flame.
“Well! we won’t see Toiney again.” The eyes of the taller girl, Olive Deering, watered, but in their dark, liquid depths shone Toiney’s gold star, never to be eclipsed. “He sleeps under the daisies of France. You should have heard him march off to enlist, singing:
“‘C’est un longue chemin à Tip-per-airee,
Eet’s a long way forre go-o--
C’est un longue chemin à Tip-per-airee,
To dat chèrie girl--I--know!
Adieu, Peekadil-lee!