"Don't try to talk," he said huskily. "Over in America we have girl scouts—kind of. They call 'em Camp Fire Girls. Some people make fun of 'em, but they can climb and they don't scream when they get in a boat, and they ain't afraid of the woods, and they don't care if it rains, and they ain't a-scared of noises, and all like that. You got to be one of them tonight. You got to be just like a feller—kind of. Even if you're tired you got to stick it out—just like France is doing."
"I am ze daughter of France," she said proudly, catching his meaning, "and you have come like America. Before, in Leteur, I was afraid. No more am I afraid. I will be ziss fiery camp girl—so!"
"Not fiery camp girl," said Tom dully; "Camp Fire Girl."
"So! I will be zat!"
"And tomorrow we'll be in Switzerland. And soon as we get across I'm going to make you sing the Marseillaise, so's when I get to Frenchy—Armand—I can tell him you sang it and nobody stopped you. You remember the other feller that was with me. He says we're going to take you to Armand as a souvenir. That's what he's always talking about—souvenirs."
It did not occupy much space in the American newspapers for there were more important things to relate. The English were circling around some ridge or other; the French were straightening out a salient, and the Germans had failed to surprise the Americans near Arracourt. The American airmen got the credit for that.
So there was only a brief account. "Two American Ship's Boys Reach France," heading said, and then followed this summary narrative as sent out by the Associated Press:
"Two American boys are reported to have reached General Pershing's forces in France, having escaped from a German prison camp and passed the Swiss frontier at an unfrequented spot after picking their way through the wilder section of the Black Forest in Baden. They subsisted chiefly on roots and grapes. Both are said to have been in the U.S. Transport Service. A despatch from Basel says that the Red Cross authorities are caring for a French Alsatian girl whom the fugitives rescued from German servitude by impersonating German military authorities. The details of their exploit are not given in the despatches.
"The American Y. M. C. A. at Nancy has no knowledge of such a girl being brought across the border and doubts the truth of this story, saying that such a rescue would be quite impossible. Another account says that the two boys upon reaching the American troops, notified a brother of the girl who was training with the expeditionary forces and that this brother was given a furlough to visit Molin, just below the Swiss frontier, where the girl was being cared for. This soldier's name is given as Armand Leteur. He is reported to have found his sister in a state of utter collapse from the treatment she had received while toiling on the roads in Alsace. One report has it that her wrist had been branded by a hot iron. The two youngsters are said to have chosen an unfrequented spot where the frontier crosses the mountains and to have manipulated the electrified barbed wire with a pair of rubber gloves which they had found in the wreck of a fallen German airship. The correspondent of the London Times says that one of these gloves has been sent to President Wilson by its proud possessor as a souvenir.