Grace Harlowe with the American Army on the RhineChase, Josephine
General
Grace Harlowe with the American Army on the Rhine
Chase, Josephine
Rhine River -- Juvenile fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Juvenile fiction
“By the way, that daughter of yours surely has made a place for
herself at Madame Duchamp’s school. They will spoil that child. We had
Yvonne over to stay all night with us and spend Sunday last week. The
yellow cat was with her. If I am well informed the yellow cat is a
lady-mouser, so you can imagine how shocked we were when Yvonne told
us that she had named the cat Tom Gray after her adopted father, but
that she called her Tom for short. I know your Tom will be delighted
with the great honor that has come to him. It’s up to your Tom to give
his namesake a handsome present. Might send on a shell-case of mice. I
understand they have plenty of them out near the front. What a lovely
present to send to a young ladies’ boarding school. What?
“Arline Thayer, Mabel Ashe, Ruth Denton and the rest of this Overton
unit are simply expiring to see you. Ruth thinks she is in love with
a Y secretary. For myself I prefer a fighting man--I don’t mean
one that will fight me--leave that to the Huns--but who will fight
another man when he crowds me off the walk. I heard a story over the
wire the other day about Hippy Wingate. It seems that one of those
secretary fellows--I don’t know what organization he belonged to--got
quite friendly with Nora Wingate, all in the nicest possible way.
But you know Hippy. Hippy heard of it, so one day he dropped in on
the Salvation hut and found Nora singing for the secretary. She said
he wanted to try her voice. Well, Hippy he--as I was saying, Hippy
invited the fellow to take a flight with him--a hop, I believe they
call it--the secretary wasn’t permitted to refuse and up they went. It
seems they have some sort of telephone arrangement between the pilot
and the observer, and after a little the secretary discovered that he
had no safety belt on and he called Hippy’s attention to it rather
anxiously. Hippy, according to the reports I got over the wire, said
he was sorry, for he was going to do some loops, to see how many he
could do. One of his squadron had done thirty-seven, but Hippy was of
the opinion that he could do at least thirty-seven and a half. ‘But
I’ll fall out,’ protested the secretary. ‘Sure you will,’ agreed Hippy,
‘but I’ll turn the loops right over the Salvation hut. When you fall
out, if my wife thinks you’re worth saving she’ll catch you.’ Well, the
secretary begged, and finally Hippy relented and said he would let his
passenger out before he looped. They landed. The secretary took the
hint and ‘beat it,’ as the doughboys would say. I understand he hasn’t
been seen around the Salvation canteen since. Isn’t that just like
Hippy?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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