Twenty-Three and a Half Hours' Leave by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Fiction, Romance, Historical, War & Military 12+

📓 "I think the Old Man likes me," went on Sergeant Gray meditatively. "It's about a week now since he told me I was a disgrace to the uniform. How'd I know I was going to sneeze in his horse's ear just as he was climbing on?" -- "Suffering snakes!" cried the second mess sergeant. "Go to bed! You're delirious." Sergeant Gray put a dimple in the girl's cheek and surveyed it critically. -- "Yep. The old boy's crazy about me," he ruminated aloud. "Asked me the other day if I thought I'd fight the Germans as hard as I fought work." -- "Probably be asking you to breakfast," observed the second mess sergeant, beginning on a new sheet. "He's in the habit of having noncoms to eat with him." The subtlety of this passed over Sergeant Gray's head. He was carefully adding a small ear to his drawing, an ear which resembled an interrogation point. But a seed had been dropped on the fertile soil of his mind. He finished, yawned again and grinned. "All right," he said. "C'est la guerre, as the old boy says. I'll lay you two dollars to one I eat breakfast with him within a month." His imagination grew with the thought. "Wait! I'll eat bran muffins with him at breakfast within a month. How's that?" -- "A bran muffin with the Old Man!" he chuckled. "A bran muffin! A --"