"Oh, zat iss what he say?" Florette cried. "Zat iss my
brother--Armand--yess!"

She explained to her parents and then advanced upon Tom, who retreated
to his second line of defence behind a chair to save himself from the
awful peril of a grateful caress.

"He told me all about how your father fought in the Franco-Prussian
War," Tom went on, "and he gave me this button and he said it was made
from a cannon they used and----"

"Ah, yess, I know!" Florette exclaimed delightedly.

"He said if I should ever happen to be in Alsace all I'd have to do
would be to show it to any French people and they'd help me. He said it
was a kind of--a kind of a vow all the French people had--that the
Germans didn't know anything about. And 'specially families that had men
in the Franco-Prussian War. He told me how he escaped, too, and got to
America, and about how he hit the German soldier that came to arrest you
for singing the _Marseillaise_."

The girl's face colored with anger, and yet with pride.

"Mostly what we came here for," Tom added in his expressionless way,
"was to get some food and get rested before we start again. We're going
through Switzerland to join the Americans--and if you'll wait a little
while you can sing the _Marseillaise_ all you want."

Something in his look and manner as he sat there, uncouth and forlorn,
sent a thrill through her.

"Zey are all like you?" she repeated. "Ze Americans?"

"Your brother and I got to be pretty good friends," said Tom simply; "he
talked just like you. When we got to a French port--I ain't allowed to
tell you the name of it--but when we got there he went away on the train
with all the other soldiers, and he waved his hand to me and said he was
going to win Alsace back. I liked him and I liked the way he talked. He
got excited, like----"

"Ah, yess--my bruzzer!"

"So now he's with General Pershing. It seemed funny not to see him after
that. I thought about him a lot. When he talked it made me feel more
patriotic and proud, like."

"Yess, yess," she urged, the tears standing in her eyes.

"Sometimes you sort of get to like a feller and you don't know why. He
would always get so excited, sort of, when he talked about France or
Uncle Sam that he'd throw his cigarette away. He wasted a lot of 'em.
He said everybody's got two countries, his own and France."

"Ah, yess," she exclaimed.

"Even if I didn't care anything about the war," Tom went on in his dull
way, "I'd want