“Are you going to look up your girl—excuse me, I mean Miss Kean, before you replenish your wardrobe?”
“Why, yes, I must not wait a minute. I would like to do it to-night.”
“To-night! Man, you are crazy! Get that alfalfa off your face first. One night can’t get her into much trouble.”
“Perhaps you are right. I am worn out, too, and a night’s rest and a shave will do wonders for both of us.”
Paris looked very changed to Kent. The streets were so dark and everything looked so sad, very different from the gay city he had left only a few weeks before. The Haute Loire had not changed, though. It was the same little hospitable fifth class joint. The madame received the exceedingly doubtful looking guests with as much cordiality as she would had they been the President of the Republic and General Joffre.
There were no baths that night, but tumbling into bed, our Kentuckians were lost to the world until the next day. What if the Prussians did fly over the city, dropping bombs on helpless noncombatants? Two young men who had been torpedoed; had floated around indefinitely in the Atlantic Ocean; had been finally picked up by the submarine that had done the damage; had remained in durance vile for several weeks on the submarine, resorting to Tutno to have any private conversation at all; and at last been transferred to a Swedish vessel and dumped by them on the northwest coast of Spain—those young men cared little whether school kept or not. The bombs that dropped that night were nothing more than pop crackers to them. The excitement in the streets did not reach their tired ears.
Kent dreamed of Chatsworth and of taking Judy down to Aunt Mary’s cabin so the old woman could see “that Judy gal” once more. Jim Castleman dreamed he swatted ten thousand Prussians, which was a sweet and peaceful dream to one who considered swatting the Prussians a privilege.