“No: not ‘Mayme’ any more.”
He flushed to his temples. “I beg your pardon, Miss Courtenay.”
“Nonsense!” she said softly. “Mary. I’ve discarded the ‘Mayme’ long ago.”
“Mary,” he repeated in a tone of musing content.
“Buddy.”
He caught his breath. “A few thousand of the best guys in the world,” he said, “call a fellow that. And every time they said it, it made my heart ache with longing to hear it in your voice.”
“You’re a queer Buddy,” returned the girl, not quite steadily. “Did you bring me home a German helmet for a souvenir?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t bring home much of anything, except some experience and the discovery of the fact that when I had to stand on my own feet, I wasn’t much.”
“You got your stripes, didn’t you?” suggested the girl.
“That’s all I did get,” he returned jealously. “I didn’t get any medal, or palms or decorations or crosses of war: I didn’t get anything except an occasional calling down and a few scratches. If I’d had the luck to get into aviation or some of the fancy branches—” David checked himself. “There I go,” he said in self-disgust. “Beefing again.”