"You don't." And this time Ted's face has the look of a burned man.

"Well--" says Oliver, frankly puzzled. "Well, that's it. Oh, it doesn't
matter. But if there was another war--"

"Oh, leave us poor people that are trying to write a couple of years before
you dump us into heroes' graves by the Yang tse Kiang!"

"Another war--and bang! into the aviation." Ted muses, his face gone thin
with tensity. "It could last as long as it liked for me, providing I got
through before it did; you'd be living anyhow, living and somebody, and
somebody who didn't give a plaintive hoot how things broke."

He sighs, and his face smooths back a little.

"Well, Lord, I've no real reason to kick, I suppose," he ends. "There are
dozens of 'em like me--dozens and hundreds and thousands all over the
shop. We had danger and all the physical pleasures and as much money as we
wanted and the sense of command--all through the war. And then they come
along and say 'it's all off, girls,' and you go back and settle down and
play you've just come out of College in peace-times and maybe by the time
you're forty you'll have a wife and an income if another scrap doesn't come
along. And then when we find it isn't as easy to readjust as they think,
they yammer around pop-eyed and say 'Oh, what wild young people--what
naughty little wasters! They won't settle down and play Puss-in-the-corner
at all--and, oh dear, oh dear, how they drink and smoke and curse 'n
everything!'"

"I'm awful afraid they might be right as to what's the trouble with us,
though," says Oliver, didactically. "We _are_ young, you know."