“I guess that’s right,” agreed Mercy Curtis, the sharp-featured girl.  “How that really nice Frenchman can stand for such a fat girl—­”

“Why,” explained Heavy calmly, “the more there is of me the more there is for him to like.”  Then she giggled.  “There were so few fat people left in Europe after four years of war that everybody liked to look at me.”

“You certainly are a sight for sore eyes,” Helen Cameron shot over her shoulder, but without losing sight of the road ahead.  She was a careful, if rapid, driver.  “And for any other eyes!  One couldn’t very well miss you, Heavy.”

“Let’s not talk any more about France—­or the war—­or anything like that,” proposed Ruth Fielding, the shadow on her face deepening.  “Both your Henri and Helen’s Tom have had to go back—­”

“Helen’s Tom?” repeated Mercy Curtis softly.  But Jennie Stone pinched her.  She would not allow anybody to tease Ruth, although they all knew well enough that the absence of Helen’s twin brother meant as much to Ruth Fielding as it did to his sister.

This was strictly a girl’s party, this ride in Helen Cameron’s automobile.  Aside from Mercy, who was the daughter of the Cheslow railroad station agent, and therefore lived in Cheslow all the year around, the girls were not native to the place.  They had just left that pretty town behind them.  It appeared that Ruth, Helen, and surely Jennie Stone, knew very few of the young men of Cheslow.  So this jaunt was, as Jennie saucily said, entirely “poulette”.

“Which she thinks is French for ‘old hen,’” scoffed the tart Mercy.

“I do not know which is worse,” Ruth Fielding said with a sigh, as Helen slowed down for a railroad crossing at which stood a flagman.  “Heavy’s French or her slang.”

“Slang!  Never!” cried the plump girl, tossing her head “Far be it from me and et cetera.  I never use slang.  I am quite as much of a purist as that professor at Ardmore—­what was his name?—­that they tell the story about.  The dear dean told him that some of the undergrads complained that his language was ‘too pedantic and unintelligible.’”

“‘Never, Madam!  Impossible!  Why,’ said the prof, ’to employ a vulgarism, perspicuity is my penultimate appellative.’”

“Ow!  Ow!” groaned Helen at the wheel “I bet that hurt your vocal cords, Heavy.”

She let in the clutch again as the party broke into laughter, and they darted across the tracks behind the passing train.

“Just the same,” added Helen, “I wish some of the boys we used to play around with were with us.  Those fellows Tom went to Seven Oaks with were all nice boys.  Dear me!”

“Most of them went into the war,” Ruth reminded her.  “Nothing is as it used to be.  Oh, dear!”

“I must say you are all very cheerful—­not!” exclaimed Jennie.  “Ruth is a regular Grandmother Grimalkin, and the rest of you are little better.  I for one just won’t think of my dear Henri as being food for cannon.  I just won’t!  Why! before he and Tom can get into the nasty business again the war may be over.  Just see the reports in the papers of what our boys are doing.  They really have the Heinies on the run.”