“When you have put on the Unaform of your Country,” I said, “or at least of Plattsburg, I shall tell you my Milatary secrets, and not before.”
“Plattsburg!” he exclaimed. “What do you know of Plattsburg?”
I then told him, and he listened, but in a very disagreeable way. And at last he said:
“The plain truth, Bab, is that some good-looking chap has filled you up with a lot of dope which is meant for men, not romantic girls. I’ll bet to cents that if a fellow with a broken noze or a squint had told you, you’d have forgotten it the next minute.”
I was exasparated. Because I am tired of being told that the defence of our Dear Country is a masculine matter.
“Carter,” I said, “I do not beleive in the double standard, and never did.”
“The what?”
“The double standard,” I said with dignaty. “It was all well and good when war meant wearing a kitchin stove and wielding a lance. It is no longer so. And I will show you.”
I did not mean to be boastfull, such not being my nature. But I did not feel that one who had not yet enlisted, remarking that there was time enough when the Enemy came over, etcetera, had any right to criticise me.
12 Midnight. How can I set down what I have discovered? And having recorded it, how be sure that Hannah will not snoop around and find this record, and so ruin everything?