"I've always suspected," Wandel said, "that picnics were unhealthy."
"Better have come," George grinned, "any other day we've been here the past few weeks."
Wandel laughed.
"Don't think I didn't pick my day. The general staff takes no unnecessary risks. Tell me, my George, when did you shave last? When did you wash your pretty face last? When did you take your swank clothes off last?"
"I think when I was a very little boy," George sighed.
Wandel became abruptly serious, turned so, perhaps, by a large shell fragment, still warm, which he had picked up. As he fingered it he stared at George.
"I know," George said, "that I point a moral, but even little boys would be glad to be made clean if they got like this. Don't rub it in."
"To the contrary," Wandel said, thoughtfully, "I'm going back over a lot of years. I'm remembering how that most extraordinary man, Freshman George Morton, looked. I'm thinking that I've always been right about you."
The warm sun, the diminution of racket, this sudden companionship, had drawn George a little from his indifferent, half-dazed condition. He, too, could look back, and without discomfort. On the Vesle it was only death that counted. Birth didn't amount to a hill of beans, or money, or education, except in that it made a man an officer. So George answered frankly:
"All along you've guessed a lot about me, Driggs."