Mary Jane giggled. “You’re terrible,” she said.
“Ah, God, he was nice,” Eloise said. “He was either funny or sweet. Not that damn little-boy sweet, either. It was a special kind of sweet. You know what he did once?”
“Uh-uh,” Mary Jane said.
“We were on the train going from Trenton to New York—it was just right after he was drafted. It was cold in the car and I had my coat sort of over us. I remember I had Joyce Morrow’s cardigan on underneath—you remember that darling blue cardigan she had?”
Mary Jane nodded, but Eloise didn’t look over to get the nod.
“Well, he sort of had his hand on my stomach. You know. Anyway, all of a sudden he said my stomach was so beautiful he wished some officer would come up and order him to stick his other hand through the window. He said he wanted to do what was fair. Then he took his hand away and told the conductor to throw his shoulders back. He told him if there was one thing he couldn’t stand it was a man who didn’t look proud of his uniform. The conductor just told him to go back to sleep.” Eloise reflected a moment, then said, “It wasn’t always what he said, but how he said it. You know.”
“Have you ever told Lew about him—I mean, at all?”
“Oh,” Eloise said, “I started to, once. But the first thing he asked me was what his rank was.”
“What was his rank?”
“Ha!” said Eloise.