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Afar in the distance a bugle sounded that called to duty He had no idea how the tilanced at his wrist watch and was around, but the way no longer seelory before his willing feet, and he went to his afternoon round of duties like a new man He had a friend, a real friend, one that he had known a long tiet one irls would have done Her letter was too frank and sincere to leave a single doubt about what shethe course of the afternoon it occurred to him to look at the date of the letter, and he found to his dismay that it had been written nearly four weeks before and had been travelling around through various departments in search of hiuessed that she had not wanted to ask for his company and barracks; she would not have knoho to ask She did not know his mother, and who else was there? His old coone to France or camp somewhere

And now, since all this time had elapsed she would think he had not cared, had scorned her letter or thought it unmaidenly! He was filled with dis indifference And the knitted things, the wonderful things that she had iven them to some one else by this time? Of course, it ht he had done for her as a child, but they ht to do, he knew, for he was in no position to allow hiirl in her position However, nobody need ever kno irl with her blue eyes, her long curls, her shy sweet sel from heaven when he was a boy She had said he did not know that he was helping her when he burst through the hedge on the cowering Chuck Woodcock; and he would likely never dare to tell her that it was because he saw her fright and saw her hide behind that tree that he went to investigate and so was able to administer a just punishment He had picked that rose froreat petted rose bush on the Wainwright lawn, reaching through an elaborate iron fence to get it as he went cross-lots back to school He would call it stealing now to do that same, but then it had been in the nature of a holy rite offered to a vestal virgin Yet he rin of an i hotly in the dark afterwards at his presuht And all the tiirl! She had kept it in her heart and remembered it!