When he came back, after two years in
the trenches, we asked him to dine with us. "Now, remember,"
I said to my wife, "Tom will be a very different being
from what he was when he went away. He left us as little
more than a school boy, only in his first year at college;
in fact, a mere child. You remember how he used to bore
us with baseball talk and that sort of thing. And how
shy he was! You recall his awful fear of Professor Razzler,
who used to teach him mathematics. All that, of course,
will be changed now. Tom will have come back a man. We
must ask the old professor to meet him. It will amuse
Tom to see him again. Just think of the things he must
have seen! But we must be a little careful at dinner not
to let him horrify the other people with brutal details
of the war."
Tom came. I had expected him to arrive in uniform with
his pocket full of bombs. Instead of this he wore ordinary
evening dress with a dinner jacket. I realised as I helped
him to take off his overcoat in the hall that he was very
proud of his dinner jacket. He had never had one before.
He said he wished the "boys" could see him in it. I asked
him why he had put off his lieutenant's uniform so quickly.
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