know it; but that's what he's doing. I interest him as a social
specimen. I mean--I'm a bug and he likes to take me up and examine
me. I think I'm the first 'Co-ed' he ever has seen; the first
girl who voted and didn't let her skirts sag and still loved good
candy! I mean that when he found in one half hour that I knew he wore
nine dollar neckties and that I was for Roosevelt, the man nearly
expired; he was that puzzled! I'm not quite the type of working
girl whom Heaven protects and he chases, but--I mean I think he is
wondering just how far Heaven really will protect my kind! When he
decides," she confided in a final burst of laughter, and tucking
away her overflowing red hair, "I may have to slap him--I mean
don't you know--"

And we did know. And being in his late forties Henry began tantalizing
me with odds on the Gilded Youth. He certainly was a beautiful
boy--tall, chestnut haired, clean cut, and altogether charming. He
played Brahms and Irving Berlin with equal grace on the piano in
the women's lounge on the ship and an amazing game of stud poker
with the San Francisco boys in the smoking room. And it was clear
that he regarded the Eager Soul as a social adventure somewhat
higher than his mother's social secretary--but of the same class.
He was returning from a furlough, to drive his ambulance in France,
and the Doctor was going out to join his unit somewhere in France
down near the Joan of Arc country. He told us shyly one day, as we
watched the wake of the ship together, that he was to be stationed
at an old chateau upon whose front is carved in stone, "I serve
because I am served!" When he did not repeat the motto we knew that
it had caught him. He had been at home working on a germ problem
connected with army life, hardly to be mentioned in the presence of
Mrs. Boffin, and he was forever casually discussing his difficulties