Trooper Tales — page 193: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Aberration of Private Brown. 179 ‘em. If I’d a’known this thing had to be kept up indefi- | nitely, I’d a’ deserted first. Say, it’s no cinch to keep the bees buzzin’ in your bonnet.” He was looking at me pathetically. There was no humor about Brown. “T have to keep saying to myself,” he went on, dismally, “Brown, you're hivey, you’re buzzy, you’re supposed to hear noises and look idiotic—and, by heaven, the idea growsonme! Say, bunk, don’t you think it would bring the doctor around if I got—er—violent ?” I felt that his suggestion was a good one, but in the capacity of a keeper, I recommended that it be a mild sort of violence. “Oh, I’ll not bruise you up, except when the others are looking,” he said seriously. And he got violent. It was that unreasoning, oh-if-I- could-only-die-give-me-a-knife sort of violence. He would look at me as if to say, “Don’t you dare give mea knife.” Still the doctor did not appear. After two hours of splendid effort, Brown was hoarse and fagged out. “Suppose,” he gasped, “I should grab that saber and dance around the quarters with it?’ He was drenched with perspiration. “You'd get shot—promptly,’ I observed. “Here comes somebody! Get nutty, Brown, it’s the doctor!” I couldn’t describe that interview. Brown spread him- self. He was a poetic dreamer—a maudlin maniac—per- fect. The doctor departed with no thought but pity in his mind—supreme evidence that there was no humor in Eomichbooks:co