The place was crowded as usual. Some of the doughboys had taken possession of the battered old piano, moved up each day as though it were their choicest possession, as indeed it really was. They sang their favorite songs over and over again, and seemed to enjoy every minute of the time.
It was no easy thing to make oneself heard with so much noise going on; but Tom obeyed the signal of his chum, under the conviction that Jack must have something of more or less importance which he wished to communicate.
"What's in the wind this time, Jack?" he asked lightly, when he found himself alongside the other. "Any more spies trying to blow up our hangars?"
"Forget all that now. I want to speak to you about Helene, Tom."
"Oh, yes! We've almost forgotten all about Helene these days, what with our many duties in the field and the air. What's new concerning little Jeanne's sister, Jack?"
"Well, I haven't been neglecting the job I undertook, all the same," came the steady answer. "Never a batch of Boche prisoners is put behind the barbed-wire enclosure but what I find a chance to look 'em over and air my limited German vocabulary."
"Trying to find out if there are any Lorrainers in the bunch—is that what you mean?"
"It is," the other told him, smiling at the accurate guess made by Tom.
"I suppose," continued Tom, "you've run across quite a few of them, and some Alsatians in the bargain; for the Prussian war-lords saw to it that few, if any, escaped the draft."
"Oh, I picked out dozens of men who claimed they had homes in Lorraine, and every mother's son of them was fighting in the Hun army because of compulsion. A lot of them lied, of course, because their names told that they came of German stock, their people having settled there after the war of Seventy-one had given the country to Germany."