that to the
uninitiated the ways of love are very strange.

It was when we were out of the village that he turned to me with a
strange look in his eyes.

"She doesn't care for Weber after all," he said. "Didn't I tell you the
minute she found she could have him she wouldn't want him? Do you think
I'd marry a girl like that?"

"She's a nice little thing," I replied. "But you're perfectly
right--she's no housekeeper."

"No housekeeper!" he said in a tone of astonishment. "That's the
cleanest hut in France. And let me tell you I've had the only cup of
coffee----"

He broke off and fell into a fit of abstraction. Somewhat later he
looked up and said: "I'll never see her again, Miss Lizzie."

"Why?"

"Because I told her I wouldn't come back until I could bring her a
German officer as a souvenir. Some idiot had told her he was going to,
and, of course, I told her if she was collecting them I'd get her one. A
fat chance I have too! I don't know what made me do it. I'm only
surprised I didn't make it the Crown Prince while I was at it."

But how soon were our thoughts to turn from soft thoughts of love to
graver matters!

Tish, as I have said before, has a strange gift of foresight that
amounts almost to prophecy.

I have never known her, for instance, to put a pink bow on an afghan and
then have the subsequent development turn out to be a boy, or vice
versa. And the very day before Mr. Ostermaier fell and sprained his
ankle she had picked up a roller chair at an auction sale, and in twenty
minutes he was in it.

At noon we stopped at a crossroads and distributed to some passing
troops our usual cigarettes and chocolate. We also fried a number of
doughnuts, and were given three cheers by various companies as they
passed. It was when our labors were over that Tish perceived a broken
machine gun abandoned by the roadside, and spent some time examining it.

"One never knows," she said, "what bits of knowledge may one day be
useful."

Mr. Burton explained the mechanism to her.

"I'd be firing one of these things now," he said gloomily, "if it were
not for that devilish piece of American ingenuity, the shower bath."

"Good gracious!" Aggie said.

"Fact. I got into a machine-gun school, but one day in a shower one of
the officers perceived my--er--affliction, badly swollen from a hike,
and reported me."

Tish was strongly inclined to tow the machine gun behind us and
eventually have it repaired, but Mr. Burton