On his way upstairs, he noticed a red service flag bearing a single star hanging in his mother’s window.
He went into his own room, looked soberly around, sat down on the lounge, suddenly tired.
He had three days’ leave before reporting for duty. It seemed a miserly allowance. Instinctively he glanced at his wrist-watch. An hour had fled already.
“The dickens!” he muttered. But he still sat there. After a while he smiled to himself and rose leisurely to make his toilet.
“Such an attractively informal girl,” he thought regretfully.
“I’m sorry I didn’t learn her name. Why didn’t I?”
Philosophy might have answered: “But to what purpose? No young man expects to pick up a girl of his own kind. And he has no business with other kinds.”
But Shotwell was no philosopher.