He got in. She had been rather reserved coming down, but now she was more talkative. His little remark about being hungry for some one to talk to had struck home. Her brother had said something like that once. They must get hungry for girls, nice girls.
So now she chattered and she drew from the tall boy beside her something about himself. It was not particularly hard to do. Sergeant Gray opened up like a flower in the sun. He explained, for instance, that he was to have a commission when he was twenty-one.
“Unless,” he admitted, “I’m in too bad with the Old Man.”
“The Old Man?”
“The general,” explained Sergeant Gray, unaware that the young lady was sitting very straight. “He’s hell—he’s strong for discipline, and all that. And—well, every now and then I slip up on something, and he gets me. It’s always me he gets,” he finished plaintively and ungrammatically.
“But you shouldn’t do things that are wrong.”
Sergeant Gray pondered this amazing statement.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he acknowledged. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You might try being terribly well behaved for—well, for twenty-four hours.”
“Do you want me to?”