"No joke at all!" said Porky bitterly. "Oh, gee; now some one
else has it!"

"Why, you don't mean that you really meant it?" said the Colonel.
"I wish you had made it clear!"

"We couldn't have tried harder to make it clear unless we had hit
you, Colonel," said Beany sadly.

"Well, that's too bad," said the Colonel. "These fellows are
just about your age. Perhaps they seem older to me because they
have had a lot of responsibility that has made them older. It's
too bad."

"Never mind, Colonel," said Porky. "If the other fellows have
fallen in luck, why, it's great for them. What, are you planning
for them?"

"It's like this," said Colonel Bright, squinting up his eye as he
puffed busily on his cigar.

"There's a lot of most important running around to do behind the
lines in what is really a zone of safety: messages, and plans,
and all that sort of thing, you understand, that have to be taken
from one officer to another, and it seemed to me that it was
better to have some one who knew that that was his whole job, and
could give every minute to it, rather than depend on petty
officers who were continually being ordered away. I thought it
would save a lot of time and anxiety if I could have aides that