"You can take one of the prints over to East Bridgeboro to-night," she added, as an inducement to his developing the film at once.
"Think she'd like to have one?"
"The idea! Of course she would."
So, to please his mother, Roscoe took off Uncle Sam's service coat, put on a kitchen apron, and went into his little familiar dark closet to wrestle with chemicals.
And there again, in the dim light of the red lantern, and the deathlike quiet, he saw that face—with the cut and the thick, disordered hair, and the big, tight-set mouth. "You can see yourself it wouldn't do for anybody to know," he fancied the lips saying. "If you told, it would spoil it all——"
"I won't spoil it," Roscoe mumbled, as if he were doing the shadowy presence a great favor.
Private Bent, who was going to "can the Kaiser," was glad to get out of that dark, stuffy place.
In the afternoon he went down into the cellar to grease and cover up his motorcycle in anticipation of his long absence "over there." This would be his last chance to do it, unless he got up very early in the morning. But then he would be an hour over his leave in getting back to camp late to-night on a milk train. A soldier's honor must not be sullied by a stolen hour....
And there again Roscoe Bent saw that face. It was a little more than a face this time. He could almost have sworn that he saw the figure of Tom Slade standing over in the dark corner near the coal bins; and as Roscoe, kneeling by his motorcycle, fixed his eyes upon this thing another sentence ran through his thoughts: "Those secret service fellows—do yer think I'd let them get yer? Do you think because you made fun of me...."
He tried to stare the apparition down, but it would not disappear—not until he went over to it and saw that it was just a burlap bag full of kindling wood, with James, the furnace man's, old felt hat thrown upon it.