Bob frowned slightly. It was all right, he reflected, to be modest, but there was no sense in being a humbug! Joe laughed. “Oh, I dare say you’ll get by,” he said, faintly ironic. After a moment he added lightly: “If they turn you down, come over to us. I’ll promise you a place!”
Harmon smiled politely, and Bob leaned across to him. “Better take him up, Harmon,” he said. “Joe’s our captain, you know.”
Harmon looked with slightly more interest at Joe. “Really?” he asked. “I’ll have to remember your offer then.” But the joking tone in his voice indicated that he wasn’t taking the suggestion very seriously. While his head was turned, Bob surreptitiously reversed the leather tag that hung from the handle of the kit-bag at his feet. Behind the little celluloid window the named stared out distinctly:
Gordon Edward Harmon.
“Yes, we’re both guards,” Joe was saying when Bob sank back in his seat again. “In fact, all three of us are, for that’s Proctor’s position, too.”
“Oh, I’m only a sub,” disclaimed Martin, “one of the ‘also-rans.’”
“‘The Three Guardsmen,’” laughed Harmon. “I guess I read about you fellows once.”
“Wasn’t there a fourth one?” asked Bob. “I never could see why that fellow Dumas called the story ‘The Three Guardsmen.’”
“That’s right,” said Martin. “D’Artagnan made the fourth.”
“Maybe D’Artagnan was a back,” suggested Joe, chuckling.