Scattering as was our custom, we began a search for an extra tire, but without results. There was only one machine in the town, and that belonged to General Pershing. We knew it at once by the four stars. As we did not desire to be interrogated by the commander-in-chief we drew into a small alleyway behind a ruined house, and Aggie and I cooked a Spanish omelet and arranged some lettuce-and-mayonnaise sandwiches.
Tish had not returned, but Mr. Burton came back just as I was placing the meal on the folding table we carried for the purpose, and we saw at once that something was wrong. He wore a look he had not worn since we left Paris.
“Leg, probably,” I said in an undertone to Aggie. He was subject to attacks of pain in the milk leg.
But Aggie’s perceptions were more tender.
“Hilda, most likely,” she said.
However, we were distracted by the arrival of Tish, who came in with her customary poise and unrolled her dinner napkin with a thoughtful air. She commented kindly on the omelet, but was rather silent.
At the end of the meal, however, she said: “If you will walk up the road past the Y. M. C. A. hut, Mr. Burton, it is just possible you will find an extra tire lying there. I am not positive, but I think it likely. I should continue walking until you find it.”
“Must have seen a rubber plant up that way,” Mr. Burton said, rather disagreeably for him. He was most pleasant usually.
“I have simply indicated a possibility,” Tish said. “Aggie, I think I’ll have a small quantity of blackberry cordial.”
With Tish recourse to that remedy indicated either fatigue or a certain nervous strain. That it was the latter was shown by the fact that when Mr. Burton had gone she started the engine of the car and suggested that we be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. She then took a folding chair and placed herself in a dark corner of the ruined house.