And half an hour later I've pushed in past the flag and am answerin' questions while the sergeant fills out the blank.
Maybe you can guess I ain't in any frivolous mood. I don't believe I thought I was about to push back the invader, or turn the tide for civilization. Neither was I lookin' on this as a sportin' flier or a larky excursion that I was goin' to indulge in at public expense. My idea was that there'd been a general call for such as me, and that I was comin' across. I was more or less sober about it.
They didn't seem much impressed at the recruitin' station. Course, you couldn't expect the sergeant to get thrilled over every party that drifted in. He'd been there for weeks, I suppose, answerin' the same fool questions over and over, knowin' all the time that half of them that came in was bluffin' and that a big per cent. of the others wouldn't do.
But this other party with the zippy waistline, the swellin' chest, and the nifty shoulder-straps—why should he glare at me in that cold, suspicious way? I wasn't tryin' to break into the army with felonious intent. How could he be sure, just from a casual glance, that I was such vicious scum?
Oh, yes; I've figured out since that he didn't mean more'n half of it, or couldn't help lookin' at civilians that way after four years at West Point, or thought he had to. But that's what I get handed to me when I've dropped all the little things that seemed important to me and walks in to chuck what I had to offer Uncle Sam on the recruitin' table.
Some kind of inspectin' officer, I've found out he was, makin' the rounds to see that the sergeants didn't loaf on the job. And, just to show that no young patriot in a last year's Panama and a sport-cut suit could slip anything over on him, he shoots in a few crisp questions on his own account.
"Married, you say?" says he. "Since when?"
"Oh, this century," says I. "Last February, to get it nearer."
He sniffs disagreeable without sayin' why. Also he takes a hand when it comes to testin' me to see whether I'm club-footed or spavined. Course, I'm no perfect male like you see in the knit underwear ads, but I've got the usual number of toes and teeth, my wind is fairly good, and I don't expect my arteries have begun to harden yet. He listens to my heart action and measures my chest expansion. Then I had to name the different colors and squint through a tube at some black dots on a card.
And the further we went the more he scowled. Finally he shakes his head at the sergeant.