"I'm no earthly good," he confided to Jackson that night, sitting
on the steps of his barracks. "I know it like a-b-c, and then I
get up and try it and all at once I'm just a plain damned fool."
"Don't give up like that, son," Jackson said. "I've seen 'em march
a platoon right into the C.O's porch before now. And once I just
saved a baby-buggy and a pair of twins."
Clayton wrote him daily, and now and then there came a letter from
Natalie, cheerful on the surface, but its cheerfulness obviously
forced. And once, to his great surprise, Marion Hayden wrote him.
"I just want you to know," she said, "that I am still interested
in you, even if it isn't going to be anything else. And that I
am ridiculously proud of you. Isn't it queer to look back on last
Winter and think what a lot of careless idiots we were? I suppose
war doesn't really change us, but it does make us wonder what
we've got in us. I am surprised to find that I am a great deal
better than I ever thought I was!"
There was comfort in the letter, but no thrill.
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