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Chug walked to the street with him. “Your daughter, she’s got a lot of nerve, all right. And that girl with her–Weld. Say, not a whimper out of her and the blood running down her face. She all right?”

“Cut her head a little. They’re both all right. Angie wouldn’t even stay in bed. Well, as I say, if there’s anything–?”

Chug flushed a little. “Tell you what, Mr. Hatton. I’m working on a thing that’ll take the whine out of the Daker.”

Old Man Hatton owned the Daker Motor plant among other things. The Daker is the best car for the money in the world. Not much for looks but everything in the engine. And everyone who has ever owned one knows that its only fault is the way its engine moans. Daker owners hate that moan. When you’re going right it sounds a pass between a peanut roaster and a banshee with bronchitis. Every engineer in the Daker plant had worked over it.

“Can’t be done,” said Old Man Hatton.

“Another three months and I’ll show you.”

“Hope you do, son. Hope you do.”

But in another three months Chug Scaritt was one of a million boys destined to take off a pink-striped shirt, a nobby belted suit, and a long-visored cap to don a rather bob-tailed brown outfit. It was some eighteen months later before he resumed the chromatic clothes with an ardour out of all proportion to their style and cut. But in the interval between doffing pink-striped shirt and donning pink-striped shirt….

No need to describe Camp Sibley, two miles outside Chippewa, and the way it grew miraculously, overnight, into a khaki city. No going into detail concerning the effective combination formed by Chug and a machine gun. These things were important and interesting. But perhaps not more interesting than the seemingly unimportant fact that in July following that April Chug was dancing blithely and rhythmically with Elizabeth Weld, and saying, “Angie Hatton’s a smooth little dancer, all right; but she isn’t in it with you.”

For Chippewa, somehow, had fused. Chippewa had forgotten sets, sections, cliques, factions, and parties, and formed a community. It had, figuratively, wiped out the railroad tracks, together with all artificial social boundaries. Chug Scaritt, in uniform, must be kept happy. He must be furnished with wholesome recreation, fun, amusement, entertainment. There sprang up, seemingly overnight, a great wooden hall in Elm Street, on what had been a vacant lot. And there, by day or by night, were to be had music, and dancing, and hot cakes, and magazines, and hot coffee, and ice cream and girls. Girls! Girls who were straight, and slim, and young, and bright-eyed, and companionable. Girls like Angie Hatton. Girls like Betty Weld. Betty Weld, who no longer sat against the wall at the golf-club dances and prayed in her heart that fat old Oakley wasn’t coming to ask her to dance.

Betty Weld was so popular now that the hostess used to have to say to her, in a tactful aside, “My dear, you’ve danced three times this evening with the Scaritt boy. You know that’s against the rules.”

Betty knew it. So did Chug. Betty danced so lightly that Chug could hardly feel her in his arms. He told her that she ran sweet and true like the engine of a high-powered car, and with as little apparent effort. She liked that, and understood.

It was wonderful how she understood. Chug had never known that girls could understand like that. She talked to you, straight. Looked at you, straight. Was interested in the things that interested you. No waist-squeezing here. No cheap banter. You even forgot she wore glasses.

“I’m going to try to get over.”

“Say, you don’t want to do that.”

“I certainly do. Why not?”

“You’re–why, you’re too young. You’re a girl. You’re–“

“I’m as old as you, or almost. They’re sending heaps of girls over to work in the canteens, and entertain the boys. If they’ll take me. I’ll have to lie six months on my age.”