“Fact. I got into a machine-gun school, but one day in a shower one of the officers perceived my—er—affliction, badly swollen from a hike, and reported me.”
Tish was strongly inclined to tow the machine gun behind us and eventually have it repaired, but Mr. Burton said it was not worth the trouble, and shortly afterward we turned off the main road into a lane, seeking a place for our luncheon. Tish drove as usual, but she continued to lament the gun.
“I feel keenly,” she said, “the necessity of being fully armed against any emergency. And I feel, too, that it is my solemn duty to salvage such weapons as come my way at any and all times.”
I called to her just then, but she was driving while looking over her shoulder at Mr. Burton, and it was too late to avoid the goat. We went over it and it lay behind us in the road quite still.
“You’ve killed it, Tish,” I said.
“Not at all,” she retorted. “It has probably only fainted. As I was saying, I feel that with our near approach to the lines we should be armed to the teeth with modern engines of destruction, and should also know how to use them.”
We were then in a very attractive valley, and Tish descending observed that if it were not for the noise of falling shells and so on it would have been a charming place to picnic.
She then instructed Aggie and me to prepare a luncheon of beef croquettes and floating island, and asked Mr. Burton to accompany her back to the car.
As I was sitting on the running board beating eggs for a meringue at the time I could not avoid overhearing the conversation.
First Mr. Burton, acting under orders, lifted the false bottom, and then he whistled and observed: “Great Cæsar’s ghost! Looks as though there is going to be hell up Sixth Street, doesn’t it?”