e map where I was anxious to be for the next few days. That was at
home. It was one of the times when I ought to be there too, for----
Well, I'll get to that later.

Besides, this fact'ry joint where they were buildin' the tanks wasn't
any allurin' spot. I can't advertise just where it was, either; the
government wouldn't like it. But if there's any part of Connecticut
that's less interestin' to loaf around in, I never got stranded there.
You run a spur track out into the bare hills for fifteen miles from
nowhere, slap up a row of cement barracks, and a few acres of machine
shops, string a ten-foot barbed-wire fence around the plant, drape the
whole outfit in soft-coal smoke, and you ain't got any Garden of Eden
winter resort. Specially when it's full of low-brow mechanics who speak
in seven different lingos and subsist mainly on cut plug and garlic.

After I'd checked up all the dope I'd come for, and durin' the times
when the Major was out plannin' more inspection stunts for me, I was
left to drill around by myself. Hours and hours. And all there was to
read in the Major's office was engineerin' magazines and the hist'ry of
Essex County, Mass. Havin' been fed up on mechanics, I tackled the
hist'ry. One chapter had a corkin' good Indian scalpin' story in it,
about a Mrs. Hannah Dustin; and say, as a short-order hair remover she
was a lady champ, all right. But the rest of the book wasn't so
thrillin'.

So I tried chattin' with the Major's secretary, a Lieutenant Barnes. The
Major must have picked him out on account of that serious face of his.
First off, I had an idea Barnes was sad just because he was detailed at
this soggy place instead of bein' sent to France. I asks him sort of
sympathizin' how long he's been here. He says three months.

"In this hole?" says I. "How do you keep from goin' bug-house?"

"I don't mind it," says he. "I find the work quite interesting."

"But evenin's?" I suggests.

"I write to my wife," says he.

I wanted to ask him what about, but I choked it back. "Oh, yes," says I.
"Of course. Any youngsters at home!"

"No," says he prompt. "Life is complicated enough without children."

"Oh, I don't know," says I. "They'd sort of help, I should think."

He shakes his head and glares gloomy out of the window. "I cannot agree
with you," says he. "Perhaps you have never seriously considered just
what it means to be a parent."

"Maybe not," says I, "but----"

"Few seem to do so," he brea