Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/352

 He enrolled against the vehemently spoken best judgment of Mr. Snelgrove.

"Do your duty, boy!" Irving urged. "Go to it; but don't pick the exact time when Hamilton is slipping out the sweetest, snappiest, sellingest little summer tourings and all-weather sedans that this street ever seen. Here we wait for four long, lingering years—and I ain't sayin' they ain't been lucrative in their way—yet they're the waitin' years lookin' forward to luck like this model which all we need is you to sell it and set the street on its ear with rage and envy, and you pick this for the prize time to take a month off runnin' at dummy sandbags and stickin' em through with bayonets."

David recognized that his month at the camp was to be costly to him in money but he wanted it to cost him. Besides being expensive for him, the experience returned him to strict discipline and hard, muscle-taxing labor.

It was much less lonely living in barracks than in a room in the city and he was busy nearly all his waking time and he was sure to be tired at night.

He never had let himself get really "soft" and he relearned the satisfaction of spending strength to exhaustion.

One day, when the Fort was open to the public, Alice drove through without intention of inquiring for David, but she was looking for his figure in every group of men she passed. She found him, at last, with a company "digging in" technically under fire. He was all at it, working rapidly, ceaselessly and with more vigor than any other man, but also with more