“Now, heroes,” began Mrs. Burton, when they were seated, “tell us some war stories. I was brought up on my grandfather’s stories of the Civil War, but the boys we know who went overseas to fight never talk war at all!”
“No wonder!” exclaimed Whitford. “It was only a little playful diversion among the nations. That your idea, Storrs?”
“Nothing to it,” Bruce assented. “We had to go to find out that the French we learned in school was no good!”
Whitford chuckled and told a story of an encounter with a French officer of high rank he had met one wet night in a lonely road. The interview began with the greatest courtesy, became violent as neither could make himself intelligible to the other, and then, when each was satisfied of the other’s honorable intentions, they parted with a great flourish of compliments. Bruce capped this with an adventure of his own, in which his personal peril was concealed by his emphasis on the ridiculous plight into which he got himself by an unauthorized excursion through a barbed wire entanglement for a private view of the enemy.
“That’s the way they all talk!” said Connie admiringly. “You’d think the whole thing had been a huge joke!”
“You’ve got to laugh at war,” observed Whitford, “it’s the only way. It’s so silly to think anything can be proved by killing a lot of people and making a lot more miserable.”
“You laugh about it, but you might both have been killed!” Mrs. Burton expostulated.
“No odds,” said Whitford, “except—that we’d have missed this party!”
They played bridge afterward, though Whitford said it would be more fun to match dollars. The bridge was well under way when the maid passed down the hall to answer the bell.
“Just a minute, Annie!” Constance laid down her cards and deliberated.