So private seccing seemed sort of tame and useless—like keepin' on sprinklin' the lawn after your chimney was bein' struck by lightnin'. I felt like I ought to be gettin' in the game somehow. Anyway, it seemed as if it was my ante.
Not that I'd been rushed off my feet by all this buntin'-wavin' or khaki-wearin'. I'm no panicky Old Glory trail-hitter. Nor I didn't lug around the idea I was the missin' hero who was to romp through the barbed wire, stamp Hindenburg's whiskers in the mud, and lead the Allies across the Rhine. I didn't even kid myself I could swim out and kick a hole in a submarine, or do the darin' aviator act after a half-hour lesson at Mineola.
In fact, I suspected that sheddin' the enemy's gore wasn't much in my line. I knew I should dislike quittin' the hay at dawn to sneak out and get mixed up with half a bushel of impetuous scrap-iron. Still, if it had to be done, why not me as well as the next party?
I'd been meanin' to talk it over with Vee—sort of hint around, anyway, and see how she'd take it. But as a matter of fact I never could seem to find just the right openin' until, there one night after dinner, as she finishes a new piece she's tryin' over on the piano, I wanders up beside her and starts absent-minded tearin' little bits off a corner of the music.
"Torchy!" she protests. "What an absurd thing to do."
"Eh?" says I, twistin' it into a cornucopia. "But you know I can't go on warmin' the bench like this."
She stares at me puzzled for a second.
"Meaning what, for instance?" she asks.
"I got to go help swat the Hun," says I.
The flickery look in them gray eyes of hers steadies down, and she reaches out for one of my hands. That's all. No jumpy emotions—not even a lip quiver.