“First of all,” said Thad, “we might pin the little miniature American flags we brought with us to our coat lapels. Then folks can see that we are Yankees, and not Britishers.”
“But we haven’t run across much bad feeling for the English among the Germans,” Bumpus ventured to say.
“Huh! wait and see what happens if Great Britain dares to take up the challenge the Kaiser’s thrown down when he crossed the Belgian border,” asserted Giraffe. “The first shot a British man-o’-war takes at a German vessel and it’s going to be unsafe to talk in English over here. You’ll even have to change that snore of yours, Bumpus, and give it a Dutch twist. Now if your name was only Gottlieb you’d pass for a native easy enough, with your red face and round figure.”
Thus chatting they made their way along the road leading away from the city to the cathedral. Many persons they chanced to meet gave them a respectful salute, no doubt at first thinking they might belong to one of the German troops of Boy Scouts so common all over the empire. When they glimpsed those tiny flags which the four lads so proudly wore, their eyebrows went up and they were noticed to say things in an undertone, one to another.
On several occasions Thad thought it best for them to step off the road and settle down in some fence corner, or under a shed it might be. Each of these times there passed a company of soldiers hurrying toward the city, and evidently making for a mobilization point so that they might occupy a place previously arranged for in the grand concentration scheme of the nation’s army.
These delays were not numerous, but they served to hold the boys up more or less, so that by the time noon came they had not covered more than three miles of territory beyond the suburbs of Cologne.
“There’s a ramshackle old car stalled over yonder,” Thad announced about this time, “and I propose that we see if anything can be done to hire or buy it. All good cars are seized by the military on sight, but they’d pass such a wreck by. If we find we can repair it, and can get even five miles an hour out of the machine, it’d be our policy to commandeer it, if our pocketbook will stand the strain.”
CHAPTER III.
GIRAFFE MAKES A BARGAIN.
“That’s the stuff, Thad,” declared Bumpus, enthusiastically.
No one considered this an odd remark for the stout boy to make, because they knew from past experience that he was not an ardent pedestrian. Bumpus was not built for action along those lines; he “het up” too easily, as he was fond of explaining, and even now could be seen mopping his perspiring brow with his bandanna handkerchief.