From one end of the wagon rose the strains of a lively air, enthusiastically hammered out on a small, portable piano by another khaki-clad youngster, seated on a stool before it. Gathered about him, half a dozen clean-cut soldier boys immediately took it up. The sheer catchiness of the melody, tunefully shouted out by the singers, had its effect on the crowd. The sturdy quality of the words, too, brought a flash of newly aroused patriotism to more than one pair of eyes belonging to the throng of persons closely packed about the big wagon. It appeared to deepen with the lustily given chorus:
“Take the Glory Road for France,
Hike along to join the fray,
With the Sammies take a chance
’Neath the Stars and Stripes to-day.
At the front brave men are falling,
Now’s your time to do and dare.
Don’t you hear your Uncle calling,
‘Boys, I need you “Over There”!’”
At the extreme edge of the crowd, a gaily painted roadster had come to a full stop, its progress temporarily checked by the mass of persons about the wagon. It was a four-cylinder car, built low, with one gasoline tank behind the seat and still another behind it, a small reserve. The body of the roadster, painted a bright green, stood out sharply by reason of the red wire wheels. The doorless entrance at one side formed a neat “U,” while the extra tires, also mounted on red wire wheels, strapped on at the rear, gave it a last additional touch. Plainly it was built for speed and had a mischievous, runaway air about it that accorded curiously with its driver, a gray-eyed, sunny-haired young man of perhaps eighteen, whose clean-cut features bore an expression of reckless good humor that immediately stamped him as one of those wide-awake, restless lads in whom the love of mischief is ingrained.