Well, Tommy old boy, I'm glad I've met you at last. I have a hunch you're kind of tall, with gray eyes and curly hair. Am I right? I'm about medium height and very handsome. Hair red—to suggest the camp-fire.
I don't know whether my scouts will let me off for a week or two, but my boss wants me to take a good rest before I knuckle down to work. I'm off for August anyway. Don't expect me before that, but if I should show up on a surprise raid, don't drop dead. I may go over the top some fine day and drop in on you like a hand grenade. Are you there all alone?
Write me again and let's get acquainted. I'd send you a photo, only I gave my girl the last one I had.
So long,
Billy Barnard,
Scoutmaster.
CHAPTER XVI
THE EPISODE IN FRANCE
Uncle Jeb smoked his pipe leisurely, listening to this letter. "Kind of a comic, hey?" he said. "I reckon ye'd like to hev 'em come. Hain't never seed each other, hey?"
Tom was silent. The letter meant more to him than Uncle Jeb imagined. It touched one of the springs of his simple, stolid nature, and his eyes glistened as he glanced over it again, drinking in its genial, friendly, familiar tone. So he had at least one friend after all. Cut of all that turmoil of war, with its dangers and sufferings, had come at least one friend. The bursting of that shell which had seemed to shake the earth, and which had shattered his nerves and lost him Roy and all those treasured friends and comrades of his boyhood, had at least brought him one true friend. He had never felt the need of a friend more than at that very moment. The cheery letter seemed for the moment, to wipe out the memory of Roy's last words to him, that he was a liar. And it aroused his memories of France.