"Why not? Were you any better than any of the soldiers?" she asked
eyeing him calmly, and somehow he seemed to feel smaller than his
normal estimate of himself.
"An officer?" he said with a contemptuous haughty light in his
eye.
"What is an officer but the servant of his men?" asked Lynn. "Would you
want to eat before them when they had stood hours in line
waiting? They who had all the hard work and none of the honors?"
Laurie's cheeks were flushed and his eyes angry: "That's rot!" he said rudely, "Where did you get it? The officers were
picked from the cream of the land. They represent the great Nation. An
insult to them is an insult to the Nation--!"
Lynn began to smile impudently--and her eyes were dancing again.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Shafton, you must not forget I was there. I
knew both officers and men. I admit that some of the officers were
princely, fit men to represent a great Christian Nation, but some of
them again were well--the scum of the earth, rather than the cream. Mr.
Shafton it does not make a man better than his fellows to be an
officer, and it does not make him fit to be an officer just because his
father is able to buy him a commission."
Laurie flushed angrily again: "My father did not buy me a commission!" he said indignantly, "I went
to a training camp and won it."
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Shafton, I meant nothing personal, but I
certainly had no use for an officer who came bustling in on those long
lines of weary soul-sick boys just back from the front, and perhaps off
again that night, and tried to get ahead of them in line. However,
let's talk of something else. Were you ever up around Dead Man's Curve?
What division were you in?"
Laurie let his anger die out and answered her questions. For a few
minutes they held quite an animated conversation about France and the
various phases of the war. Laurie had been in air service. One could
see just how handsome he must have looked in his uniform. One would
know also that he would be brave and reckless. It was written all over
his face and in his very attitude. He showed her his "croix de guerre."
"Mark was taken prisoner by the Germans," she said sadly as she handed
it back, her eyes dreamy and faraway, then suddenly seeming to realize
that she had spoken her thoughts aloud she flushed and hurried on to
other experiences during the war, but she talked abstractedly, as one
whose thoughts had suddenly been diverted. The young man watched her
baffled: "You seem so aloof," he said all at once watching her as she sewed away
on the bit of linen, "You seem almost as if you--well--despised
me. Excuse me if I say that it's a rather new experience. People in
my world don't act that way to me, really they don't. And you don't
even know who I am nor anything about me. Do you think that's quite
fair?"