“Well, if you had known the boys, you would have thought of their side of it all right,” said Frank seriously, “They are mighty good scouts, both of them, and they think a lot of their old dad, too, I can tell you. Why, many a night”! his voice took on a reminiscent note and the girls felt once again that they were privileged in having a brief glimpse of the life “over there”! “when a surprise attack was scheduled for the next morning or we were waiting for some such manoeuvre from the enemy, Arnold would talk to me about his dad! that was the time when fellows got chummy, you know, and got to know each other’s souls! and once he gave me a note for the old chap and asked me to deliver it if I came through and he didn’t. I think I have it about me somewhere.” He fumbled about in his pockets while the girls waited silently. Presently he drew forth a little slip of paper, muddy and worn and dust-stained from being carried about for a long, long time in a khaki pocket. “He told me,” Frank went on, still holding the slip of paper in his hand but making no attempt to open it, “that his mother had died when he and Jimmy were young and that since then his dad had been father and mother both to them and that he had worked himself nearly to death to give them a chance for the college education that he had had. He said that the one thing that had always threatened to floor the old boy was when either he or Jim got mad and threatened to give up school and go to work so as to take some of the load from the old pater’s shoulders. So they were glad, actually glad, when the war came along and gave them a chance not only to serve their country and earn some money! even if it was only a miserable pittance! so that they could send some home to their dad and feel that they had stopped being a drag upon him. He used to tell me,” Frank went on, for the spell of those old thrilling times was strong upon him again, “with tears in his eyes! and I’ll tell you there was no braver man in all the American army than Arnold Dempsey; he was good for two Boches any day! that it would be the happiest moment of his life when he got back to the old country and announced to his proud and admiring pater that he had come home to turn the tables; that Jimmy and he were going to make the old fellow take a rest and do the work themselves for a change. And he asked me, in case anything did happen to him and Jimmy, to be kind to his dad and try to make up to him as much as I could. I gave him my promise that night.” Frank looked about the intent group of faces soberly, “In case the boys had been killed, I would have regarded it as a sacred trust.” Something swelled in the girls’ hearts and for a moment they could not speak. Then, “I guess we all love you for that, Frank,” said Betty simply. With a little nod of her head toward the slip of paper he still held, she added: “What about that! now?”