"You do?" He flashed one swift glance at me, then dropped his eyes.
I politely averted my own, but not before I saw two tear-drops splash on the hot, gray pavement.
"If I could see," he said, presently, "if I could see one of those brown hills, just one,—this flat country makes me tired."
"Can you imagine," I said, "that I have been as homesick in California as you are in France?"
"No! no!" he replied, breathlessly. "No, I could not imagine that."
"That I sailed into San Francisco Bay with a heartache because those brown hills you speak of so lovingly were not my native hills?"
"But you are grown up; you do not need to leave your country."
"Our duty sometimes takes us to foreign lands. You will be a better soldier some day for having had a time of trial and endurance."
"I know it," he said, under his breath. "But sometimes I think I must break loose, especially at night, when the bugles blow."
I knew what he meant. At eight o'clock every evening, from the various barracks in Orléans, the sweet, piercing notes of bugle answering bugle could be heard; and the strain was the one played by the American bugles in the school that I guessed he had attended.