"I have an idea I will," Tom answered with a grin, "when I have time to think about it. But it would make me sicker still," he added stoutly, "to go back before we'd licked the Huns."
"Right-o!" cried Billy. "When I go back I want to take a lot of German helmets along to give to some girls I know."
"Some girls," chaffed Bart. "You talk like a Mormon, Billy."
The next few days were busy and delightful ones for the boys. The townspeople opened their hearts and homes to them, and they were feasted and entertained to their heart's content. Everything was so new and strange to them that they were constantly stumbling upon surprises.
The language, to be sure, offered some obstacles. The boys had been taught some of the most necessary French phrases while in their training camp, and these along with some language primers they carried, sufficed for their more simple needs. But their vocabulary was limited and their accent was a fearful and wonderful thing, though their hosts were too polite to laugh at them.
Frank had some advantage over the others because his mother, being a French woman, had taught him her native tongue, and it was a great comfort to the rest of the Camport boys to have Frank along with them as interpreter when they themselves were stumped—which, it must be confessed, was often!
Tom especially, who had no gift for languages was usually in hot water. His struggles with the language were frantic, not to say pathetic.
"You're game, old scout," chaffed Billy, after Tom had wrestled in vain with the pronunciation of the French word for soup. "But why in thunder did you make that waiter crazy by asking for bullion? Any one would think you were trying to cop off the United States mint."
"Well, what should I say?" Tom defended himself stoutly, as he thumbed over his phrase book. "There it is, plain as day," he added, triumphantly—"b-o-u-i-l-l-o-n. If that isn't bullion, what is it?"
"You're all wrong, you're all wrong," said Bart condescendingly. "It's bwe-yone, just like that."