You can't do anything here without a uniform.

And they tell me he's got everything correct, down to the crest on the buttons." They walked on in silence for a few moments, Pendleton retaining a certain rigidity of step and bearing which Paul had come to recognize as indicating some uneasiness or mental disturbance on his part.
Hathaway had no intention of precipitating the confidence of his companion.

Perhaps experience had told him it would come soon enough.
So he spoke carelessly of himself.

How the need of a year's relaxation and change had brought him abroad, his journeyings, and, finally, how he had been advised by his German physician to spend a few weeks at Strudle Bad preparatory to the voyage home.

Yet he was perfectly aware that the colonel from time to time cast a furtive glance at his face.
"And YOU," he said in conclusion--"when do you intend to return to California ?" The colonel hesitated slightly.