Well, you can imagine how I felt! Here I had been dreaming about him all this time and he didn’t even remember my name! I had a good notion not to tell him what my name was, but I couldn’t very well avoid it, so I finally helped him out.
“Canwick! That’s it!” he exclaimed. “Of course. Why can’t I remember names? Well, anyway, I’m certainly glad to see you.”
“You’ll pardon me, sir,” I interrupted. “But I still haven’t the faintest idea as to who you are.” I had to call up all my resources to keep my voice in its assumed naturalness.
“My name is Winstead,” he hurriedly explained. “And your sister made a tremendous impression upon me—tremendous!” He hesitated a moment. “So tremendous, I must confess, that I forgot whether I had heard her last name or not. You see, I only saw her that one night and all I could remember was her first name. It’s Leona, isn’t it?”
I nodded, and suddenly I began to feel good again. I couldn’t keep from smiling and I had to tell him that I seemed to recall hearing something about him from my sister. “But why didn’t you write down her name and her address?” I inquired, as disinterestedly as I could.
“I did,” he replied. “Wrote it down and stuck it in the pocket of my blouse—and that’s the last I saw of it. Must have been thrown out by the tailor or someone, because when I tried to find it, it was nowhere to be found. And I was genuinely sorry, for I had told your sister I would write just as soon as I learned where I would be stationed. I suppose she thought I was having a good time with her, eh?”
“Well—” I tried to say something, but just couldn’t. So that was why he had never written. And he did remember, after all. I did mean something to him, judging by the way he acted now.
“Tell me about her,” he pleaded earnestly but with that same engaging smile that made my heart flutter in the garden back home.
I told him that my sister was very busy, entertaining in the camps.
“Over here?” he asked eagerly.