SI AND SHORTY HAVE AN ATTACK OF IT, FOLLOWED BY RECOVERY.
IT TOOK many days for the boys' lacerated feet to recover sufficiently to permit their going about and returning to duty. They spent the period of enforced idleness in chewing the cud of bitter reflection. The thorns had cut far more painfully into their pride than into their feet. The time was mostly passed in moody silence, very foreign to the customary liveliness of the Hoosier's Rest. They only spoke to one another on the most necessary subjects, and then briefly. In their sour shame at the whole thing they even became wroth with each other. Shorty sneered at the way Si cleaned up the house, and Si condemned Shorty's cooking. Thenceforth Shorty slept on the floor, while Si occupied the bed, and they cooked their meals separately. The newness of the clothes they drew from the Quartermaster angered them, and they tried to make them look as dirty and shabby as the old.
Once they were on the point of actually coming to blows.
Si had thoughtlessly flung some dishwater into the company street. It was a misdemeanor that in ordinary times would have been impossible to him. Now almost anything was.
Shorty instantly growled:
"You slouch, you ought to go to the guard-house for that."
Si retorted hotly:
"Slouch yourself! Look where you throwed them coffee-grounds this morning," and he pointed to the tell-tale evidence beside the house.
