“Yes. Perhaps we may dream that we are gypsies. I fear I should just love that vagabond life.”
“No need to tell me that, Grace Harlowe. I have known it for a long time. Suppose we make our beds and retire. Good-night, Buddies.”
“Yes, good-night, and thank you all again,” added Grace.
“We’ll just hook down the tailpiece so in case of storm you won’t get wet. Here’s my club. Should any one bother you, bat him over the head and yell for me. I’ll be on till four in the morning. Good-night.”
The M. P. pulled down the canvas tailpiece and secured it, then the girls heard them going away.
“Even if the M. P.’s are ‘winning the war’ they’re real Americans,” concluded Miss Briggs. “Are you going to undress?”
Grace said she was not, so they removed their blouses, rolled in their blankets and promptly went to sleep.
It was some hours later when Grace Harlowe heard shouting, listened half asleep, then went back into dreamland. Some time later she sat up wide awake. The truck was swaying from side to side, jolting disagreeably, and the horn up forward was honking like a frightened wild goose leader warning its flock. She knew instantly what had happened. The army train was under motion and they were going with it. This was rather more than she had bargained for, and quickly pulling an edge of the tailpiece aside, opening a narrow slit, the Overton girl peered out. The scene was an unfamiliar one. They were out in the country and there was no sign of the village where they had been only a few minutes before, as it seemed to her.
“Why, we must have been out for some time,” she marveled. “Br-r-r!” Rain was falling, the wind was blowing a gale, and marching columns that they were passing were soaked and the faces of the men wore surly expressions.
“No balloon flight to-day, so I suppose I might as well let well enough alone and take what the kind fates have bestowed upon me,” concluded the Overton girl. “Poor Elfreda doesn’t know anything about it. I think I shall go back to sleep.”