“The penalty of being a girl,” replied Ruth, practically. “Tom doesn’t believe, I suppose, that girls would quite understand his manly feelings,” she added with a sudden elfish smile.
“Cat’s foot!” ejaculated the twin, with scorn.
Tom Cameron, however, did not run altogether true to form if Ruth was right in her philosophy. He had always been used to talking seriously at times with Ruth, and during this furlough he found time to have a long and confidential talk with the girl of the Red Mill. This might be the only furlough he would have before sailing for France, for he had already obtained his commission as second lieutenant.
There was an understanding between the young man and Ruth Fielding—an unspoken and tacit feeling that they were “made for each other.” They were young. Ruth’s thoughts had never dwelt much upon love and marriage. She never looked on each man she met half-wonderingly as a possible husband. She had never met any man with this feeling. Perhaps, in part, that was, unconsciously to herself, because Tom had always been so a part of her life and her thoughts. Lately, however, she had come to the realization that if Tom should really ask her to marry him when his education was completed and he was established in the world, the girl of the Red Mill would be very likely to consider his offer seriously.
“Things aren’t coming out just as we had planned, Ruth,” the young man said on this occasion. “I guess this war is going to knock a lot of plans in the head. If it lasts several years, many of us fellows, if we come through it safely, will feel that we are too old to go back to college.
“Can you imagine a fellow who has spent months in the trenches, and has done the things that the soldiers are having to do and to endure and to learn over there—can you imagine his coming back here and going to school again?”
“Oh, Tom! I suppose that is so. The returned soldier must feel vastly older and more experienced in every way than men who have never heard the bursting of shells and the rattle of machine guns. Oh, dear, Tommy! Are we going to know you at all when you come back?”
“Maybe not,” grinned Tom. “I may raise whiskers. Most of the poilus do, I understand. But you could not really imagine a regiment of Uncle Sam’s soldiers that were not clean shaven.”
“We want to see it all, too—Helen and I,” Ruth said, sighing. “We are so far away from the front.”
“Goodness!” he exclaimed. “I should think you would be glad.”