"Hmm," said Mr. Conne.
"So if the feller expects to go to the front and get captured pretty soon, prob'ly he's in a special unit. Maybe I might be all wrong about it—some fellers used to call me Bullhead," he added by way of shaving his boldness down a little.
But Mr. Conne, with hat tilted far down over his forehead and cigar at an outrageously rakish angle, was looking straight ahead of him, at a French flag across the way.
"Go on," he said crisply.
"Anyway, I'm sure the feller wouldn't be an engineer, 'cause mostly they're behind the lines. So I thought maybe he'd be a surgeon——"
Mr. Conne was whistling, almost inaudibly, his eyes fixed upon the flagpole opposite. "He was educated at Heidelberg," said he.
"I didn't think of that," said Tom.
"It's where he met L."
Tom said nothing. His line of reasoning seemed to be lifted quietly away from him. Mr. Conne was turning the kaleidoscope and showing him new designs. "He took L. home for the holidays," he quietly observed. "Old Piff and the boys."
"I—I didn't think of that," said Tom, rather crestfallen.