“Ha! ha!” laughed the man. “Got me to take twice as much as I was going to, at that. Well, it was a good job even if I did get stung, and now you’ve done a better one. Let’s get a going. Don’t forget to come and tell me all about this in the morning.”
On the stairs Cavvy heard the big, burly fellow chuckle again.
“I’ll be hanged,” he muttered. “Boy Scouts!”
CHAPTER XXX
THE LONELY SOLDIER
Private John Farren of Seattle, glanced listlessly out of the barracks’ window and sighed. It was not a very cheerful view. The snow drove past his vision in fine, slanting lines that veiled and softened the raw outlines of the building across the cantonment street. It had been falling steadily all night, and Farren was tired of the soft, monotonous brush of icy particles against the glass. It took very little today to tire him. A month in the contagious ward of a camp hospital is apt to weaken nerves as well as body, and Farren had come out only the afternoon before.
A laugh from the other end of the room, loud, hearty, a little strident, brought a frown to his face and made him lift languidly on one elbow to glance across the rows of neat cots to where a group of men in khaki was gathered intimately in the further corner. There were six or eight of them, bright-eyed, alert, pleasant looking chaps. Their uniforms were still a trifle new, perhaps, but already there was a touch of the soldierly in carriage and bearing in spite of the brief tenure of their training.
Yet Farren, after a single glance, dropped back on his cot, a pang of bitterness in his heart. That was the very corner where he had been wont to gather with his chum, Dick Harley, with chuckling, smiling Bruce Ballard, with lank, taciturn MacComber, and a dozen other of those men whom six months of close association had transformed from strangers into the most intimate of friends.
Where were they now, these men who had come to mean so much to him? In France, no doubt. He could not tell. He only knew that while he lay helpless in the hospital his regiment had gone, bag and baggage, leaving him behind. The nature of his illness made it impossible for them to even come and say good-by. He had returned yesterday to the barracks which had been his home for months to find it full of strangers—strangers who had already acquired an air of permanent possession, which made him feel, curiously, as if he were the rookie and they the old established veterans.
The newcomers had not been deliberately indifferent. It was simply that they had already formed their little cliques and friendships. And with Christmas day at hand, there was the exciting lottery of leave to occupy them, the interest of Christmas letters and Christmas parcels to fill their minds. An added obstacle, too, was Farren’s lassitude and weakness, which made the mere act of friendly overture an effort he could not bring himself to tackle. So he simply slipped back into his place, silent, reserved, desperately lonely. He did not even try for leave. Of what use would that be to him when he knew no one in the East and had no place to go? Once, to be sure, he thought of the Boy Scouts he had come to know so pleasantly. They were mighty nice chaps, and he felt they liked him. But at this season they were probably too full of Christmas fun and excitement to give him even a thought.
A lump rose in Farren’s throat, his lids drooped defendingly. And out of the sheltering darkness, the soft swish of snow sounding in his ears, there rose a picture of—Home! There were dear, familiar faces in that picture, shadowy familiar objects in its background. And because Farren was young and rather weak and very lonely, he clung desperately to the illusion, quite failing to hear the click of a door opening or the rapid thud of feet across the bare boards. The footsteps ceased abruptly and there came a momentary pause. Then a low, eager voice broke through his reverie.