“I’ll always keep it,” said Tom, little dreaming what it would mean to him.
An authoritative voice was heard and they saw the soldiers throwing away their cigars and cigarettes and emptying their pipes against the rail. At the same time the electric light in the converted guard house was extinguished and an officer came along calling something into each of the staterooms along the promenade tier. They were entering the danger zone.
CHAPTER VII
HE BECOMES VERY PROUD, AND ALSO VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED
Tom’s talk with Frenchy left him feeling very proud that he was American born. He had that advantage over the Frenchman, he thought, even though Frenchy had escaped through a pass in the Alsatian mountains and made such an adventurous flight.
When Frenchy had spoken of the American soldiers Tom felt especially proud. He was glad that all his people so far as he knew anything about them, were good out-and-out Yankees. Even his poor worthless father had been a great patriot, and played the Star-Spangled Banner on his old accordion when he ought to have been at work.
Then there was poor old one-armed Uncle Job Slade who used to get drunk, but he had told Tom about “them confounded rebels and traitors” of Lincoln’s time, and when he had died in the Soldiers’ Home they had buried him with the Stars and Stripes draped over his coffin.
He was sorry now that he had not mentioned these things when gruff, well-meaning Pete Connigan had spoken disparagingly of the Slades.