But Shelley never had a safe moment, I guess.  No such thing as a quiet sector where he was.  He fought at the Front, and then he’d fight at hospitals every time he got took back there for being shot up.  He was almost too scrappy even for that war.  He was usually too busy to write, but we got plenteous reports of his adventures from other men, these adventures always going hard with whatever Germans got in his way.  And I bet his mother never dreamed that his being such a demon fighter was all due to her keeping him in curls so long, where he got the habit and come to love it for its own sake.

Anyway, he fought and fought and had everything happen to him that German science had discovered was useful to exterminate the lesser races, and it finally begun to tell on him, hardened as he was by fighting from the cradle up, as you might say.

It was a glad day for Arline when she got word that he was a broken-down invalid and had landed at an Atlantic Ocean port on his way home.  She got arrowroot gruel and jelly and medicinal delicacies and cushions, and looked forward to a life of nursing.  She hoped that in the years to come she could coax the glow of health back to his wan cheeks.  And I wouldn’t put it past her—­mebbe she hoped she could get him to let the golden hair grow again, just long enough to make him interesting as he lay coughing on his couch.

And Shelley come home, but his idee of being an invalid wasn’t anything like his mother’s.  He looked stout as a horse, and merely wished to rest up for a couple weeks before getting some other kind of action suited to his peculiar talents.  And worse, he wasn’t Shelley Vane Plunkett—­he was Bugs Plunkett; and his mother’s heart broke again.  He was shaved like a convict and thicker through than ever, and full of rich outdoor words about what he would do to this so-and-so medical officer for not letting him back into the scrap.  Yes, sir; that man is going to suffer casualties right up to the limit the minute he gets out of his uniform—­and him thinking the world is at peace once more!  Sure, Shelley had been shot through the lungs a couple of times, and one leg had been considerably altered from the original plan, but he had claimed he was a better scrapper than ever before and had offered to prove it to this medical officer right then and there if it could be done quiet.  But this fair offer had been rejected.

So here he’d come back, not any kind of a first-class invalid that would be nice to nurse, but as Bugs Plunkett!  No sooner did he get to town than letters and postal cards begun to come addressed to Mr. Bugs Plunkett or mebbe B. Plunkett, Esquire; and the cards would be from his old pals in the trenches, many of whom had worse names, even, than Shelley had made for himself.