And thus we came to the shores of sunny France, a land that was to remind us over and over again of our own sunny land of Kansas.

We landed after dark.  Every one was going about vowing deathless friendship to every one else, and so far as the stenographers and the ambulance boys were concerned, it came to Henry and me that we meant it; for they were a fine lot, just joyous, honest, brave young Americans going out to do their little part in a big enterprise.  While we were bidding good-bye to our boys and girls, we kept a weather eye on the Eager Soul.  She had hooked the Gilded Youth fairly deeply.  He saw that her trunk came up from the hold, but we noticed that while he was gone, the Doctor showed up and went with her to sort out her hand-baggage from the pile on the deck.  The gang plank was let down under a pair of smoky torches.  And the Gilded Youth had paid a fine tip some place to be permitted to be the first passenger off the boat that he might get one of the two taxis in sight for the Eager Soul.  She followed him, but she made him let the Doctor come along.  And so the drinks—­lemon squash and buttermilk—­were equally on Henry and me.  We hurried down the gang plank after the happy trio.  They were young—­so infinitely and ineffably young, it seemed to us.  And the girl’s face was flushed and joyous, and her hair—­why it didn’t shake out and drown her we never knew; certainly it surged out from under her hat like ripples of youth incarnate.  We saw them stacking their valises in the taxi and over the taxi and around the taxi and the last we saw of her was when she bent out of the cab window and waved and smiled at us, two sedate old parties alone there in the crowd, with the French language rising to our ears as we teetered unsteadily into it.

What an adventure they were going into—­what a new adventure, the new and beautiful adventure of youth, the old and inexplicable adventure of life!  So we waved back at them so long as they were in sight, and the white handkerchief of the Eager Soul fluttered back from the disappearing cab.  When it was gone, Henry turned to a sad-looking cabman with a sway-backed carriage and explained with much eloquence that we wanted him to haul us a la hotel France—­toot sweet!

[Illustration with caption:  So we waved back at them so long as they were in sight]

CHAPTER II

In which we observe the “Rocket’s red glare”

Bordeaux is the “Somewhere in France” from which cablegrams from passengers on the French liners usually are sent.  This will be no news to the Germans, nor to Americans who read the advertisements of the French liners, but it may be news to Americans who receive the mysterious cablegrams “from a French port,” after their friends have landed.  It is a dear old town, mouldy, and weather-beaten, and mediaeval, this Bordeaux, with high, mysterious