Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ Sergeant Gray sat quiet and a trifle hurt.
“I am only warning you,” said the girl. “There are spies simply everywhere. I can't do much, and that's my way of doing something. That and being a sort of taxi,” she added.
The were in a town now, and by the lamps he saw just how pretty she was.
“Thanks awfully for warning me,” he said rather humbly. “A fellow gets to think that all this spy talk is—just talk.” ”

“ They must get hungry for girls, nice girls.
So now she chattered and she drew from the tall boy beside her something about himself. It was not particularly hard to do. Sergeant Gray opened up like a flower in the sun. He explained, for instance, that he was to have a commission when he was twenty-one.
“Unless,” he admitted, “I'm in too bad with the Old Man.”
“The Old Man?”
“The general,” explained Sergeant Gray, unaware that the young lady was sitting very straight. “He's hell—he's strong for discipline, and all that. And—well, every now and then I slip up on something, and he gets me. ”

“ Kindly women at stations passed in sandwiches and coffee, and the troop, with the eternal appetite of twenty-odd, gorged themselves and cheered in overhanging pyramids from the windows. The corporals on guard between the cars slept on seats improvised of saddle-bags, and between naps rolled cigarettes. ”

“ A discovery, too, of certain conditions in the barracks distracted them.
“A week here,” growled the second mess sergeant, “and we'll all have to be dipped.”
“Might as well get used to it, old son,” said Sergeant Gray, and hummed a little ditty to the effect that “They are wild, simply wild, over me.”
But with the falling of darkness the high spirits of the crowd broke loose. That night there was a battle royal in the barracks. The lower squad room, which housed among others the N. C. O's, decided to raid the two upper squad rooms. ”

“ Girls, theatres and food comprised them. No particular girl, no particular theatre, no particular food. He would call up some of the fellows from college, and they would have sisters. And when he had gone to the other side they would write to him.
He had no sentimental affiliations now. He had put all his eggs in one basket and the basket had been stolen.
“Lucky I'm not dependent on eggs for food!” he mused and, mistaking the hand in which he held the doughnut, bit vigorously into his cigarette. ”

“ He wanted a real girl, the sort a fellow could write to later on.
Little quickenings of romance stirred in his heart. A pretty girl, preferably small. He liked them little, with pointed chins. They had a way, the little girls with pointed chins, of looking up at a fellow——”
He wakened at seven. The troop were still sleeping, but from the baggage car ahead there floated back an odor of frying bacon, and on the platform of a station outside—for the train had stopped—the general was taking an airing.
Sergeant Gray blew his whistle. “R-r-roll out!” he yelled. ”