“But why not get me that job anyway?” I asked.

He just laughed at that suggestion. “Do you think I’d be instrumental in turning you loose like that?” he demanded. “Not unless you were mine—then I’d know you’d behave!”

Just like that! Well, you had to admit that Mr. Marfield was persistent and persevering and I had to take his proposal seriously, because I hadn’t heard from the Captain, and that hurt tremendously, and after all it occurred to me that I really might be quite happy as Mrs. Marfield, even though I knew I could never love him as storybook heroines are supposed to love their husbands. I guess my Aunt’s continental ideas had begun to sink into my mind, for I was beginning to admit to myself that marriages are seldom one long-drawn-out love affair and that I was probably childishly optimistic when I thought that mine would be one of the exceptional cases.

I told him I would think it over, and for the next few weeks I did little else but that. All I did was think—about these two men: the one who wanted me and the one I wanted, and whom I hadn’t seen or heard from since the night we met. There didn’t seem to be any excuse for his silence and yet I kept thinking up reasons for it and hoping against hope that each next mail would bring at least a post card.

That’s what love does to you: makes you go crazy with hopes and wants and at the same time makes you capable of callously letting another go crazy wanting you. The whole triangular affair had me dizzy and I couldn’t sleep nights for thinking about it.

So that’s what I mean when I say that it never rains but it pours, even in the matter of having prayers answered. I prayed that the Lord would do something to change conditions and what did he do but bring in a man who made me change into a thoroughly girlish girl in one short evening! My prayers were answered, even in the matter of making Leon more of a man—but here I was more miserable than ever and I didn’t know whether to thank the Almighty or send up another complaint.

CHAPTER 3
Apple-sauce for the Gander

The only thing that kept me from going crazy or doing something rash during this time was the problem of the would-be hero of the family, my dear twin. From the first day in camp all he did was complain and not a week passed without a long letter full of nothing but kicks and regrets and weeping words. Even his letters to Vyvy, who was walking around with her head in the clouds of pride, carried an obvious undercurrent of pessimism and dejection, which he tried to explain away to her by saying that it was caused by his being away from her “beautiful presence.”

For a kid of his nature, it must have been a terrible experience from the beginning, which was a thorough physical examination in a roomful of naked men, not one of whom would ever suffer from inability to perspire, and during which poor Leon would have fainted dead away if the man next to him hadn’t noticed his deathly pallor and pushed him to the one and only window in the room. He didn’t actually pass out, but it seemed to him that from that moment on he was a marked weakling in the camp and there was none to give him a shred of sympathy.

When he went to get his uniform and equipment, the clerk took one look at him and threw a complete assortment of everything from underwear to blankets at him and when he came to array himself in these duds, he couldn’t bear to look at himself, because the uniform billowed about him like the costume of a Turkish dancer with the sleeves of the blouse inches too short and the neckband two sizes too large. There must have been tears lurking behind his gentle eyes when he approached his sergeant and asked meekly, “Would it be possible to exchange these things for others of my size?”