just now, and I'm going to tell you why.... She's pretty, too, don't
you think so? I thought you would.

The thing that started me off was Hoofy Gilbert coming across the dorm
hall with a letter in his hand. We called him Hoofy because he hated
walking so, and always drove his big yellow roadster from one class to
another, even if it was only a thousand feet straight across the
campus to the next lecture. Well, Hoofy came in that day--it was just
before the Easter vacation--looking as if he were down and out for
fair. It turned out he'd written home about enlisting, and he'd got
back a letter from his mother, all sobs. He didn't know what to do
about it. You see the fellows were all writing home, and trying to
break it gently that when they got there they'd have to put it up to
the family to say "Go, and God bless you!" But it was looking pretty
dubious for some of my special friends. Their mothers were all right,
an awfully nice sort, of course, but when it came to telling Bob and
Sam and Hector to enlist--they just simply couldn't do it.

Hoofy said he'd got to enlist, in spite of his mother. He knew it was
his duty, but he'd rather be shot than go home and go through the
farewells. He knew his mother would be sick in bed about it, and she'd
cling round his neck and cry on his shoulder, and he'd have to loosen
her arms and go off leaving her feeling like that. And his father
would look grave and tell him not to mind, that his mother wasn't
well, and that she couldn't help it--and Hoofy really didn't think she
could, being made that way. Just the same, he dreaded going home to
say good-bye--dreaded it so much he felt like flunking it and wiring
he couldn't come.

I told him he mustn't do that--that his mother would never forgive