l
anxious about her happiness. She's a queer girl, you know, and intensely
patriotic."

"Yes I noticed that, even if you did monopolize most of her time,"
chuckled Tom.

"How she does hate the Germans, though! And that's what will get her
into trouble I'm afraid, if she and her guardian have managed to get
through the lines in any way, and back to his home town, wherever that
may be."

"Why should she feel so bitter toward the Kaiser and his people, Jack?"

"I'll tell you. Her mother was drowned. She was aboard the
_Lusitania_, and was never seen after the sinking. Mr. Potzfeldt
was there too, it seems, but couldn't save Mrs. Gleason, he claims,
though he tried in every way to do so. She was a distant relative of
his, you remember."

"Then if Bessie knows about her mother's death," Tom went on to say, "I
don't wonder she feels that way toward everything German. I'd hate the
entire race if my mother had been murdered, as those women and children
were, when that torpedo was launched against the great passenger steamer
without any warning."

"She told me she felt heart-broken because she was far too young to do
anything to assist in the drive against the central empires. You see,
Bessie has great hopes of some day growing tall enough to become a war
nurse. She is deeply interested in the Red Cross; and Tom, would you
believe it, the midget practices regular United States Army standing
exercises in the hope of hastening her growth."

"I honor the little girl for her ambition," Tom said. "But I'm inclined
to think this war will be long past before she has grown to a suitable
size to enlist among the nurses of the Paris hospitals. And if that Carl
Potzfeldt entertains the sentiments we suspected him of, and is secretly
in sympathy with the Huns, although passing for a neutral, her task will
be rendered doubly hard."

"That's what makes me feel bad every time I get to thinking of Bessie.
If only we could chance to run across them again I'd like to engineer
some scheme by which she could be taken away from her guardian. For
instance, if only it could be proved that Potzfeldt was in the pay of
the German Government, don't you see he could be stood up against a
wall, and fixed; and then some one would be found able and willing to
take care of the girl."

Tom laughed again.

"How nicely you make your arrangements, Jack! Very pleasant outlook for
poor Mr. Potzfeldt, I should say. Why, you hustle him off this earth
ju