“Why, certainly,” Mr. Conne laughed; “I’ll see you again, Tommy. Good-by.”
And Tom tried this time to follow his advice. He was soon released and the officer, whom he had so feared, was good enough to say, “You did well and you’ve had a pretty tough experience.” The captain spoke kindly to him, too, and all the ship’s people seemed to understand. The few soldiers who had not yet been sent forward to billets near the front, did not jolly him or even refer to his detective propensities. They did not even mimic him when he said “kind of,” as they had done before.
He had little to do during the ship’s brief stay in port and Mr. Conne, who was there on some mysterious business, showed him about the quaint old French town and treated him more familiarly than he had ever done before. For Tom Slade had received his first wound in the great war and though it was long in healing, it yielded to kindness and sympathy, and these everyone showed him.
And so there came a day when he and Mr. Conne stood upon the platform amid a throng of French people and watched the last contingent of the boys as they called back cheerily from the queer-looking freight cars which were to bear them up through the French country to that mysterious “somewhere”—the most famous place in France.
“So long, Whitey!” they called. “See you later.”
“Good-by, Tommy, old boy; hope the tin fish don’t get you going back!”
“Hurry up back and bring some more over, Whitey!”
“Au revoir!”