nce of the George
Washington meeting.

"Tell him it was a harmless little social affair that a few of us
fellows and girls got up. We will never do it again. I did not know
it would be any offense. Tell him I was only doing what I would do
in my own country. There we can get together and dance a little any
time without disturbing the nation." He wanted to add that the
United States was not like police-ridden Germany where it almost
seemed that a chap couldn't tie his shoe without permission from the
Kaiser. Prudence refrained him.

"Cotillion Coterie. That's French," translated the Ober-Offizier on
the bench, gravely illuminated. An assistant suggested that _sec_
might, in fact, refer to champagne. That would be French too.

"When did you leave France the last time?" the other demanded in a
hoarse, triumphant tone.

"Never been in France," returned Jim in a loud voice.

"Never been in France and yet you use French fluently."

"Tell him I don't know a word of French. I didn't know that was
especially French. With us it's just dancing language--everybody
uses it. Tell him"--Jim added encouragingly--"tell him I never knew
a Frenchman in my life."

"This is evidently a French affair as well as English," commented
the officer. "Anglo-French. Reaches out."

"What are they saying?" anxiously asked Deming of his intermediary.

On learning the new and extensive ramifications into which the
sportive CCC was leading him, he threw up his hands before he
thought and exclaimed, "Oh, my God!" It expressed his disgusted
confirmation of Mr. Anderson's assertion--"What egregious asses such
Germans can be!"--and also his _own_ alarm over his situation. When
would he get back to America at this rate? It was going to cost
money to escape from this scrape, and how would his governor and
mother feel about it? A few months in a political prison with rats
and vermin crawling over him seemed ahead instead of the jolly
summer he had planned. He cursed under his breath the member of the
CCC who had carelessly let his card get away from his clutches.

But a greater surprise awaited him. It revealed an example of the
tremendous thoroughness and immense detail that were the pride of
the Teuton bureaucracy. Deming was taken off his feet. The chief
held up a little battered sheet.

"Have you always paid your bills in Germany?"

"Yes, I have, sir," returned Jim, wondering at this strange turn,
but fully sure of himself on this ground.