"Bet your life! Say, Lafe, who doesn't know of Senator Knute Walsen of
Idaho? He's a big man, over here to supervise our rail transportation
in France. See those two Red Cross girls? They're his daughters.
Taking courses in nursing, I hear, and right at the front too.
Wouldn't that get you? Who is that showing them round?"
"That is Buck Bangs, from Butte, Montana — Our old Buck! What d'ye think of that, bo?"
"He seems quite intimate with 'em, don't he? Where'd he meet up with that crowd, Lafe?"
"Well, he and I sort o' dropped in on the girls just before we were in the relief station. Remember, don't you? It was while we were returning home from that raid where poor Finzer got his."
"Don't say! Yes, of course, we've all heard how you and Buck piloted our fellows after you two had been out all night. Had a hell of a time — didn't you?" Suddenly Erwin looked his amazement. "Look here, Lafe. Honest Injun! Were those two daughters of old Walsen in that hut when you and Bangs just managed to make your landing there? Whoopee!"
Blaine had nodded, then looked after the receding group half regretfully. Orris gripped the Ensign's arm, and began telling things.
"They must be plucky girls, all right. It so happened that the older nurse — the one you and I saw later — had gone away with a desperately wounded man in an ambulance to the next base. After you and Buck landed, you were both bad off, he worse than you. Well, sir, the Boches shelled that hut before any one got back, and before our boys had driven the Boches clear off. What do you reckon those two girls did? They didn't holler: nary a squeal! But they stuck to you two and to business, and nursed you both, so that by the time aid arrived, you were all pretty comfortable. Some girls, those two! I hear that the younger, Miss Andra Walsen, is going to remain. Maybe they both are. And as for money, there's wads of it in the family, believe me! No wonder Bucky is bucking up to 'em a bit!"
After this lengthy exordium, Orris discreetly, changed the subject by wanting to know when he and Buck would be assigned again to duty.
"I'm ready right now. Whether Buck is or not I can't say. As for me,
I've got the old flying fever, big and hot. I suppose it rests with
Byers."
Later on as the group whom they had been discussing approached, Blaine and his friend were introduced. Andra, it was plain to see, had ready given poor Buck a deal to think about later on. She was handsome, dark-eyed, light-haired with a peachy complexion — a combination hard indeed for a susceptible youth to resist. Avella, her sister, blue-eyed, dark-haired, a year older than her sister, was equally fascinating, yet in a different way.