“What?”
“Pinched her paw in the mouse-trap.”
“I’ll be careful,” said the girl, laughing.
CHAPTER V
In touch with his unexciting business again, after many months of glorious absence, and seated once more at his abhorred yellow-oak desk, young Shotwell discovered it was anything except agreeable for him to gather up the ravelled thrums of civilian life after the thrilling taste of service over seas.
For him, so long accustomed to excitement, the zest of living seemed to die with the signing of the armistice.
In fact, since the Argonne drive, all luck seemed to have deserted him; for in the very middle of operations he had been sent back to the United States as instructor; and there the armistice had now caught him. Furthermore, then, before he realised what dreadful thing was happening to him, he had been politely assigned to that vague limbo supposedly inhabited by a mythical organisation known as The Officers’ Reserve Corps, and had been given indefinite leave of absence preliminary to being mustered out of the service of the United States.
To part from his uniform was agonising, and he berated the fate that pried him loose from tunic and puttees. So disgusted was he that, although the Government allowed three months longer before discarding uniforms, he shed his in disgust for “cits.”
But James Shotwell, Jr., was not the only man bewildered 55 and annoyed by the rapidity of events which followed the first days of demobilisation. Half a dozen other young fellows in the big real estate offices of Clarence Sharrow & Co. found themselves yanked out of uniform and seated once more at their familiar, uninviting desks of yellow oak––very young men, mostly, assigned to various camps of special three-month instruction; and now cruelly interrupted while scrambling frantically after commissions in machine-gun companies, field artillery, flying units, and tank corps.