“Perhaps influence, perhaps her money; perhaps a little of both,” nodded Grace. “You know as much about it as I do.”
“And that much, little as it is, is too much,” declared J. Elfreda Briggs. “I should characterize her as an inordinately vain woman, one of the newly rich, who, clothed with a little authority, would be a mighty uncomfortable companion. The girls at the hospital who have worked under her say she is a regular martinet. How does it come that she has been unloaded on us?”
“I am sure I do not know, J. Elfreda. I do not even know with whom she came through last night when we started out on our march to the Rhine. I was ordered to pick her up and take her through in our automobile to-day, together with two other women who accompany her. However, this march to the River Rhine having only just begun, we haven’t yet settled down to a routine.”
“Neither has the enemy,” observed Elfreda.
Grace nodded reflectively.
“He has signed the armistice, but knowing the Hun as I do, I know that, if he thinks he can safely do so, he will play a scurvy trick on us. I hardly think we shall be attacked, however, but, J. Elfreda, take my word for it, there are many deep and dark Hun plots being hatched in this victorious army at this very moment,” she declared.
“What do you mean?”
“Hun treachery, Elfreda.”
“You know something, Grace Harlowe?”
“No, not in the way you mean. I know the animal and its ways; that’s all. Look at that line of observation balloons of ours floating in the sky to our rear, and moving forward as we move forward. Know what they are doing?”