: Torchy and Vee by Ford Sewell - New York (N.Y.) Fiction; Humorous stories; Private secretaries Fiction; World War 1914-1918 United States Fiction

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colonel would get all balled up in his work if he didn't keep Stub right on the job. 'See,' says she, wavin' a picture post card at me, 'he's been appointed on the K. P. squad again.' Honest, she thinks he's something like a Knights of Pythias and goes marchin' around important with a plume in his hat and a gold sword. Mothers are easy, ain't they? You can bet though, that Stub don't try to buffalo little old me with anything like that. What he writes me, which ain't much, is mostly that his top sergeant's a grouch or that they've been quarantined on account of influenza. So I sends him back the best advice I've got in stock, askin' him why he don't buck up on his drill, keep his equipment clean, and shift that potato peelin' work to some of the new squads.

"Course, I don't spill any of this to Mrs. Mears. Poor soul! She's got troubles enough, right in her joints. Rheumatism. Uh-huh. Most of the time she has to get around in a wheel chair. Ain't that fierce? And she was mighty nervy about sendin' Stubby off. Wouldn't let him say a word about exemption. No, sir! 'Never mind me, Edgar,' says she. 'You kill a lot of Huns. I'll get along somehow.' That's talkin', ain't it? And her livin' with a sister-in-law that has a disposition like a green parrot!

"So I can't find much fault with her when she sort of overdoes the fond mother act. Seems to me they might let him off now and then, even if he does miss a few bugle calls, or forgets some of the rules and regulations. And this bug of hers about wonderin' when and how what he's doin' for his country is goin' to be reco'nized proper--Well, I don't debate that with her at all. For one thing I don't get just exactly what she wants; whether it's for the President to write her a special letter of thanks, or for Mr. Baker to make Stubby a captain or something right off. Anyway, she don't feel that Edgar's bein' treated right. He ain't even had his name in the papers and only a few of the neighbors seem to know he's a hero. Yep, it's foolish of her, I expect, but I let her unload it all on me without dodgin'. I've even promised to see what can be done about it. I--I'd been thinkin', sir, about askin' you."

"Eh?" says I, "Me? Oh, I couldn't think of a thing."

"Why, sure," I breaks in. "I'd do what I could."

I throws it off casual as I'm grabbin' my hat on my way out to lunch. And I supposed that would be all there'd be to it. But I hadn't got more'n half a line on Miss Casey. She's no easy quitter, that young lady. Having let me in on her little affair, she seems to think it's no more'n right I should be kept posted. A day or so later she lugs in a picture of Private Mears, one of the muddy printed post-card effects such as these roadside tripod artists take of the buddy boys around the camps.

"That's him," says she. "Looks kind of swell in the uniform, don't he?"

It was a fact. Stubby not only looks swell--but swelling. And it's lucky them army buttons are sewed on tight or else a good snappy salute would wreck him from the chin down. He's a sturdy, bulgy party, 'specially about the leggins.

"That's right, too," says Miss Casey. "Know what I tell him? If he can fight like he can eat, good-night Kaiser Bill. But at that they've pared fifteen pounds off him since he's been in the service."

"Maybe," sighs Miss Casey, "but I wisht they'd let me have a close-up of him before they risk loadin' him on a transport. That's all I got against the Government. You ain't thought of any way it might be worked, have you?"

I had to admit that I hadn't, not addin' I didn't expect to. And I must have been stallin' along that line for a week or more until the forenoon when Vee blows in unexpected durin' a shoppin' trip and announces that I may take her out to luncheon.

In the middle of the second one though, there's a call for me to go into the private office, and when I comes back from a ten-minute interview with Old Hickory I finds Vee and Miss Casey chattin' away like old friends. Vee is being told all about Stubby and the hard-boiled eggs he has for company officers.

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