“Hmm—hang on to it.”
“You bet I’m going to. But maybe he wouldn’t like now, even if I met him again—after what he knows——”
“Look here, Tom. You’ll be sailing in a day or so and when you come back I’ll probably be in Washington. Perhaps you’ll wish to enlist over here soon. I’m going to give you a little button, kind of, as you would say—to keep in your head. And this is it. Remember, there’s only one person in the world who can disgrace Tom Slade, and that is Tom Slade himself.”
He slapped Tom on the shoulder, and they strolled up the dingy, crooked street, past the jumble of old brown houses, until it petered out in a plain where there was a little cemetery, filled with wooden crosses.
“Those poor fellows all did their bit,” said Mr. Conne.
Tom looked silently at the straight rows of graves. He seemed to be getting nearer and nearer to the war.
“How far is the front?” he asked.
“Not as far as from New York to Boston, Tom. Straight over that way is Paris. When you get past Paris you begin to see the villages all in ruins,—between the old front and the new front.”
“I’ve hiked as far as that.”
“Yes, it isn’t far.”