“I guess we’d all be willing to subscribe to that!” cried Randy.
“You just wait until Uncle Sam gets into this scrap,” declared Jack. “We’ll show ’em what’s what!”
“How I wish I could go to the front,” said Andy wistfully. “It would beat going to school all hollow.”
“Now that we’ve gone into the war, we’ll have an army over there before long,” said Spouter. “I suppose they’ll send some of the regulars over first, and then some of the national guard—of course taken into the regular army—and after that we’ll have the volunteers. I suppose if Uncle Sam really wanted to do it, he could get together several million men without half trying. And with an army like that, properly trained and equipped, and transported to the battlefields of Europe, we shall be sure to make a showing which will throw terror into the hearts of——”
“Hurrah! Spouter is off again,” broke in Randy.
“Say, Spout! they ought to send you to the front to help talk the Huns to death,” put in Andy. “Talk about gas and gas masks——”
“Aw say! you’re always butting in when I’ve got something to say,” growled the lad who loved to talk.
There might have been a little friction right then and there, but another explosion came from across Clearwater Lake, and all stopped to gaze at the thick volume of yellowish-black smoke which rolled directly toward them.
“The wind must be shifting,” declared Jack, for all of the smoke heretofore had rolled up the lake shore.
“It’s too bad it is coming this way,” said Ruth. “Miss Garwood declares that a good deal of smoke from such shells is poisonous.” Miss Garwood was the head of the school for girls, and likewise an authority in chemistry.