Carter Brooks sat beside me, and he gave me a long and piercing glance.

“What’s the matter with you, Bab?” he said.  “You were rather rude to me last night and now you’ve been looking through me and not at me ever since I came, and I’ll bet you’re feverish.”

“Not at all.”  I said, in a cold tone.  “I may be excited, because of war and my Country’s Peril.  But for goodness sake don’t act like the Familey, which always considers that I am sick when I am merely intence.”

“Intence about what?” he asked.

But can one say when one’s friends are a disapointment to one?  No, or at least not at the table.

The others were not listening, as father was fussing about my waking him at daylight to put out the Emblem.

“Just slide your hand this way, under the table cloth,” Carter Brooks said in a low tone.  “It may be only intencity, but it looks most awfully like chicken pocks or somthing.”

So I did, considering that it was only Politeness, and he took it and said: 

“Don’t jerk!  It is nice and warm and soft, but not feverish.  What’s that lump?”

“It’s a blister,” I said.  And as the others were now complaining about the soup, I told him of the Corps, etcetera, thinking that perhaps it would rouse him to some patriotic feelings.  But no, it did not.

“Now look here,” he said, turning and frowning at me, “Aviation Corps means flying.  Just remember this,—­if I hear of your trying any of that nonsense I’ll make it my business to see that you’re locked up, young lady.”

“I shall do exactly as I like, Carter” I said in a friggid manner.  “I shall fly if I so desire, and you have nothing to say about it.”

However, seeing that he was going to tell my father, I added: 

“We shall probably not fly, as we have no machine.  There are Cavalry Regiments that have no horses, aren’t there?  But we are but at the beginning of our Milatary existence, and no one can tell what the next day may bring forth.”

“Not with you, anyhow,” he said in an angry tone, and was very cold to me the rest of the dinner hour.

They talked about the war, but what a disapointment was mine!  I had returned from my Institution of Learning full of ferver, and it was a bitter moment when I heard my father observe that he felt he could be of more use to his Native Land by making shells than by marching and carrying a gun, as he had once had milk-leg and was never the same since.

“Of course,” said my father, “Bab thinks I am a slacker.  But a shell is more valuable against the Germans than a milk leg, anytime.”

I at that moment looked up and saw William looking at my father in a strange manner.  To those who were not on the alert it might have apeared that he was trying not to smile, my father having a way of indulging in “quips and cranks and wanton wiles” at the table which mother does not like, as our Butlers are apt to listen to him and not fill the glasses and so on.