"That's right!" chimed in Bessie. "Oh, how I wish I were a man!" and she looked enviously at Jack and Tom.
The major gave Bessie and her mother some instructions in regard to their actions should the spy come back, and then told Tom and Jack to prepare to leave Paris the next night.
"Report to your former camp," he said, "and there you will find further instructions waiting for you."
"Well, then as we have to-night, our last one free, let's go to some entertainment," suggested Tom to Bessie and her mother. "We can have supper afterward—not much of a celebration, for these are war times and it won't do to rejoice too much. But we ought to commemorate this meeting somehow."
"That's right!" agreed Jack.
So they went to a little play and had supper afterward in a quiet restaurant. That is, it was quiet until a sudden explosion a few blocks away announced the arrival of another German shell from the big gun, and then there was excitement enough.
Fortunately, however, the shots did little beyond material damage, no one being killed. At the same time, however, there appeared some German planes over Paris, doubtless to observe the effect of the dropping of the long-distance shells, and naturally the French airmen went up to give them combat.
The great searchlights began to play, picking out the hostile craft, and making them targets for the machine guns of the intrepid Frenchmen, and more than one Boche never got back over his lines again, while several Frenchmen found heroes' graves on the soil they had died to defend.
"Oh, if we were only up there helping," said Tom, as he and his friends watched.
"We shall be there very soon," murmured Jack. "And it can't be any too soon for me."