“Poor old thing, she felt lost in Prussia,” said Bob, remembering the entreaty of Elizabeth’s eyes and voice in the midst of the Berlin hurly-burly. “She wants awfully to go back to America.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have her bring friend husband along, if I were you, Bob,” advised Larry. “I didn’t take much to Karl.”
“Even before the war I hated him,” said Bob thoughtfully. “He’s given me some awful moments! I never want to set eyes on him again.”
“That Franz isn’t so unlike him—he has the same sly look,” commented Larry. “And a kind of sour smile as though he had swallowed something bitter.”
“Perhaps smiling at American officers gives him a sick feeling,” said Alan. “What do you have to do with him?”
“Nothing,” said Lucy, “except that he supplies the hospital with wood. But he lives in the forest near the mineral spring, so we often see him, for Michelle and I like to play with his children. They are children, you know Boche or not—and quite cunning.”
“Cunning—I wager they are. Cunning as foxes,” declared Alan, feeling a fresh grudge against his late enemies as the old wound in his knee gave him a sharp twinge.
“No, I mean cunning in the American sense,” explained Lucy, laughing. “For us it means—well—pretty, amusing—or, what else, Bob?”
“Anything that children are—or kittens or puppies,” supplemented Bob vaguely.
“Captain Beattie always objected to my using cunning that way,” said Lucy, “but he never could give me the right word to take its place. Oh, look, here comes Adelheid.”