“If you are going to make fun of them, you can stop.”
“I wasn’t making fun. I was just thinking what funny presents girls do give men.”
“Well, so they do, but my little Godmother gave me bully presents,—cigarettes to burn, home-made molasses candy and beaten biscuit. She had lots of imagination in the presents she sent and the blessed child never did burden me with a work-box but sent me a gross of safety-pins that beat all the sewing kits on earth. I don’t believe you like my Godmother much.”
“Don’t you? Well, I do.”
“You should like her because somehow you remind me of her.”
“Oh! Have you seen her?”
“Only in my mind’s eye. I begged her for a picture of herself but she has never sent it. She has promised it, though. You see I got to answering her letters in the same spirit in which she wrote to me, only I was not quite so frank, I am afraid. She told me everything about herself while I told her only my thoughts. I never did tell her I was not a homeless soldier of fortune. She thinks I am absolutely friendless and dependent on my pay as a private for my living. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have a sou—at least I have felt that way—but now——”
“But now what?”
“But now I don’t think it is so bad to have a little tin,” and he held one of the little stained hands in his for a moment.
She gently withdrew it and opened a third letter. This was full of hospital experiences and so were all that followed. The tone of them became more intimate and friendly. The desire to serve was ever uppermost—just to get in the War Zone and help.