France."

"Were you in France?"

"Two years," Tom said.

"How many merit badges have you got, anyway, Mr.--Slady?"

"Oh, I don't know," Tom said; "about thirty or thirty-five, I guess."

"You _guess?_ I bet you've got the Gold Cross. Where is it?" Hervey made
a quick inspection of Tom's pongee shirt, but all he saw there was the
front with buttons gone and the brown chest showing.

"I couldn't pin it on there very well, could I?" Tom said, lured by his
companion's eagerness into a little show of amusement.

"Where is it?" Hervey demanded.

"I'm letting a girl wear it," Tom said.

"Oh, what I know about _you!_" Hervey said, teasingly. "You can bet if I
ever get the Gold Cross or the Eagle Badge (which I won't this trip) no
girl will ever wear them."

"You can't be so sure about that," said Tom, out of his larger worldly
experience, "sometimes they take them away from you."

"You're a funny fellow," Hervey said, while his gaze still expressed his
generous impulse of hero-worship. "I guess I seem like just a sort of