nd your friends. Here's hoping the men who are your
special friends will all come home safe and sound and soon.

Sincerely,

J. CAMERON.

He wrote that letter over and over mentally as he tossed on his bunk in
the dark, changing phrases and whole sentences. Perhaps it would be
better to say something about "her officer friends" and make it very
clear to her that he understood his own distant position with her. Then
suddenly he kicked the big blue blanket off and sat up with a deep sigh.
What a fool he was. He could not write another letter. The letter was
gone, and as it was written he must abide by it. He could not get it back
or unwrite it much as he wished it. There was no excuse, or way to make
it possible to write and refuse those sweaters and things, was there?

He sat staring into the darkness while the man in the next bunk roused to
toss back his blanket which had fallen superfluously across his face, and
to mutter some sleepy imprecations. But Cameron was off on the
composition of another letter:

MY DEAR MISS MACDONALD:

I have been thinking it over and have decided that I do not need a
sweater or any of those other things you mention. I really am pretty well
supplied with necessities, and you know they don't give us much room to
put anything around the barracks. There must be a lot of other fellows
who need them more, so I will decline that you may give your work to
others who have nothing, or to those who are your personal friends.

Very truly,

J. CAMERON.

Having convinced his turbulent brain that it was quite possible for him
to write such a letter as this, he flung himself miserably back on his
hard cot again and realized that he did not want to write it. That it
would be almost an insult to the girl, who even if she had been
patronizing him, had done it with a kind intent, and after all it was not
her fault that he was a fool. She had a right to marry whom she would.
Certainly he never expected her to marry him. Only he had to own to
himself that he wanted those things she had offered. He wanted to touch
something she had worked upon, and feel that it belonged to him. He
wanted to keep this much of human friendship for himself. Even if she was
going to ma