"Uh-huh!" says I. "And if you can make it back to Mineola with a perfectly good passenger in the extra seat you'll qualify for scout work and most likely be over pluggin' Huns within a month or so. That won't tickle you a bit more'n it will me to get to Long Island to-night, for——"
Well, then I tells him about Vee, and everything.
"By George!" says he. "You're all right, Lieutenant—er——"
"Ah, between friends, Donald," says I, "it's Torchy."
At which we links arms chummy and goes marchin' close order down to the farm-house to see how this Martin party was gettin' on. We finds him rolled up in quilts on an old sofa that the folks had shoved up in front of the stove—a slim, nervous-lookin' young gink with sandy hair and a peaked nose.
"Well, how about you?" asks Allen.
Martin he only moans and reaches for a warm flat-iron that he'd been holdin' against his stomach.
"Still dying, eh?" says Allen. "Why didn't you report sick this morning, instead of letting them send you up with me?"
"I—I was all right then," whines Martin. "It—it must have been the altitude got me. I—I'd never been that high before, you know."
"Bah!" says the Lieutenant. "Not over thirty-five hundred at any time. How do you expect me to take you back—on the hundred-foot level? You'll make a fine observer, you will!"