As Carrol Gordon ceased reading he looked around and remarked:
“Some news, eh? Now how many of you are going to pack your trunks and slide for home?”
“And to think of T. Singleton Albert, the great soda-water clerk of Syracuse, going up against such a game as that!” put in Tom Dorsey, irrelevantly. “Poor Drugstore!”
“One thing to remember always is this, mes garçons,” exclaimed old Père Goubain, nodding his head sagely: “Imagination is a very wonderful thing, and the Boche Baron must realize the hold it has on certain natures. Imagination, mes amis, can have the effect of glorifying the most ordinary and commonplace of objects and detracting from the most sublime. It can rob the heart of determination and destroy hope, and, equally well, it can raise a man’s courage to such heights as to place him on the pinnacle of fame. Bah, I say, for the Baron’s red birds!” The innkeeper snapped his fingers derisively. “I cannot believe that any air fighters of the Allies would be frightened by a few cans of paint.”
“Well spoken, Père Goubain!” laughed Hampton Coles. “Yours are the words of a wise man; which proves that an innkeeper can be a philosopher as well as a server to the material needs of humanity.”
“How would you like to be a combat pilot and meet the Baron, yourself?” asked Jack Norworth, quizzically.
“It would be quite impossible, mon garçon,” sighed Père Goubain. “My weight, alas I would sink the ship.”
“Shall I give him a message from you if we should happen to meet?” laughed George Glenn.
“Yes, and let it be accompanied by a fusillade of machine gun bullets.”
Don Hale thoroughly enjoyed his evening at the club. Instinctively he felt that it was a sort of dividing line between ease and comfort and a strenuous existence, with dangers and perils ever present from the moment he became in actuality an élève pilot of the École Militaire d’Aviation de Beaumont.