Page:Air Service Boys Flying for Victory.djvu/96

86 me if I didn't have that sheathing outside the frame of my plane, I guess I ought to be grateful. Do you know only today I was figuring whether it paid for the extra weight, and had nearly made up my mind to have it ripedripped [sic] off. Nothing doing about that from this time on. Saved me a bad leg I tell you, boys."

Arriving at the Y. M. C. A. shelter the boys halted at the door. It was so cozy in there the boys could always find some good excuse for bending their footsteps in that direction; and also loitering after they had finished the business that took them to the hut. So no one was surprised, or disappointed, to hear Jack call out:

"I think I upset my glass of lemonade in my hurry to clear out; and as the thirst seems worse now than ever I reckon I'll have to indulge in another of the same kind, if Miss Sallie has the fixings. Will you join me, fellows?"

"Not me, for one, Jack," said Harry. "I got all of mine down without spilling a drop. I'm not so keen as you about lemonade. But I'll go along, because these rest places are the only homelike signs we run across on the front these days."

Jack thereupon gave Tom a sly nudge in the ribs.

"I was right, it seems," he managed to whisper