"You big ape, you!" she called, in her clear, crisp voice."If you had your foot on the ground you wouldn't dast call to a decent girl like that.If you were down here I'd slap the face of you.You know you're safe up there."The words were scarcely out of her mouth before Chet Ball's sturdy legs were twinkling down the pole.His spurred heels dug into the soft pine of the pole with little ripe, tearing sounds.He walked up to Stasia and stood squarely in front of her, six feet of brawn and brazen nerve.One ruddy cheek he presented to her astonished gaze."Hello, sweetheart," he said.And waited.The Rourke girl hesitated just a second.All the Irish heart in her was melting at the boyish impudence of the man before her.Then she lifted one hand and slapped his smooth cheek.It was a ringing slap.You saw the four marks of her fingers upon his face.Chet straightened, his blue eyes bluer.Stasia looked up at him, her eyes wide.Then down at her own hand, as if it belonged to somebody else.Her hand came up to her own face.She burst into tears, turned, and ran.And as she ran, and as she wept, she saw that Chet was still standing there, looking after her.
Next morning, when Stasia Rourke went by to work, Chet Ball was standing at the foot of the pole, waiting.
They were to have been married that next June.But that next June Chet Ball, perched perilously on the branch of a tree in a small woodsy spot somewhere in France, was one reason why the American artillery in that same woodsy spot was getting such a deadly range on the enemy.Chet's costume was so devised that even through field glasses (made in Germany) you couldn't tell where tree left off and Chet began.
Then, quite suddenly, the Germans got the range.The tree in which Chet was hidden came down with a crash, and Chet lay there, more than ever indiscernible among its tender foliage.
Which brings us back to the English garden, the yellow chicken, Miss Kate, and the letter.
His shattered leg was mended by one of those miracles of modern war surgery, though he never again would dig his spurred heels into the pine of a G.L.& P.Company pole.But the other thing--they put it down under the broad general head of shock.In the lovely English garden they set him to weaving and painting as a means of soothing the shattered nerves.He had made everything from pottery jars to bead chains, from baskets to rugs.Slowly the tortured nerves healed.But the doctors, when they stopped at Chet's cot or chair, talked always of "the memory center." Chet seemed satisfied to go on placidly painting toys or weaving chains with his great, square-tipped fingers--the fingers that had wielded the pliers so cleverly in his pole-climbing days.
"It's just something that only luck or an accident can mend," said the nerve specialist."Time may do it--but I doubt it.Sometimes just a word-- the right word--will set the thing in motion again.Does he get any letters?""His girl writes to him.Fine letters.But she doesn't know yet about-- about this.I've written his letters for him.She knows now that his leg is healed and she wonders----"That had been a month ago.Today Miss Kate slit the envelope post- marked Chicago.Chet was fingering the yellow wooden chicken, pride in his eyes.In Miss Kate's eyes there was a troubled, baffled look as she began to read:
Chet, dear, it's raining in Chicago.And you know when itrains in Chicago it's wetter, and muddier, and rainier than any place in the world.Except maybe this Flanders we're reading so much about.They say for rain and mud that place takes the prize.
I don't know what I'm going on about rain and mud for, Chet darling, when it's you I'm thinking of.Nothing else and nobody else.Chet, I got a funny feeling there's something you're keeping back from me.You're hurt worse than just the leg.Boy, dear, don't you know it won't make any difference with me how you look, or feel, or anything?I don't care howbad you're smashed up.I'd rather have you without any features at all than any other man with two sets.Whatever's happened to the outside of you, they can't change your insides.And you're the same man that called out to me thatday, "Hoo-hoo!Hello, sweetheart!" and when I gave you a piece of my mind, climbed down off the pole, and put your faceup to be slapped, God bless the boy in you----A sharp little sound from him.Miss Kate looked up, quickly.Chet Ball was staring at the beady-eyed yellow chicken in his hand.
"What's this thing?" he demanded in a strange voice.
Miss Kate answered him very quietly, trying to keep her own voice easy and natural."That's a toy chicken, cut out of wood.""What'm I doin' with it?" "You've just finished painting it."Chet Ball held it in his great hand and stared at it for a brief moment, struggling between anger and amusement.And between anger and amusement he put it down on the table none too gently and stood up, yawning a little.
"That's a hell of a job for a he-man!" Then in utter contrition: "Oh, beggin' your pardon! That was fierce! I didn't----"But there was nothing shocked about the expression on Miss Kate's face.She was registering joy--pure joy.
