Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/153

 There followed several war marriages then, and by the time the United States entered the war in April, 1917, there was quite a little group of war-brides in Wallbridge. By June, 1917, the group had doubled.

Sheilah helped double it.

Sheilah told John Sheldon that one reason she was going to marry Felix was because he looked so funny—or was it tragic—in his uniform. She hadn't known whether to laugh or cry. It was much too small and second-hand. It strained at the buttons across the front, and wrinkled in tight folds across the back, and bulged and protruded, as if it was stuffed. And it was just a private's uniform, too!

One of the women at the Red Cross Headquarters who had seen Felix had described him, and everybody at the table had laughed. Sheilah had been at the table. She herself hadn't seen Felix then (he was just back on his first twenty-four-hour leave from training-camp). But he came around that evening. The woman had said Felix looked more like one of those dummies they use for bayonet practice at training-camp than a human being. And another had answered, that from what she had heard of him, she guessed he'd act like a dummy too. She couldn't imagine Felix Nawn bayoneting back.