“Fair enough,” answered Tom laughingly. But before they were half through telling him of their experiences of that evening, and all they had been through since he had last seen them, Buck was sitting up wide awake and plying them with interested queries upon this and that phase of their harrowing escapes and thrilling captures and adventures.
“Say!” that energetic youth finally ejaculated. “I’d have given a whole lot to have been along.”
“Wish you had been,” said Ollie, with deep sincerity. “There were times when we certainly needed you.”
“It means certain and early promotion for all of you, of course,” Buck went on, “and promotion is certainly worth striving for; but it isn’t that so much as just having been through such things.”
The other three lads nodded in silent assent.
“Just imagine, Tom,” Buck Granger went on, with increasing enthusiasm, and turning toward the newly-made sergeant, “just imagine the yarn that will make for a little snoozer you’re joggin’ on your knee when you’re a grandfather, eh?”
“Say, look here,” Tom interjected, in a startled tone.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Buck went on. “You expect to be a grandfather some day, don’t you, if you get through this all right?”
“Your mind certainly can cover great distances in a short stretch of time,” Tom objected again.
“Yes, but that story will make any kid proud of his grandpap,” Buck continued, while George and Ollie chuckled at Tom’s evident discomfort. “Why, that would make any youngster wish he had been living in the days of the taming of the Boche, just to have knocked off a few of them himself. Yes-sirree!”