When the boys were all washed and shaved and combed,—­and they were so larky over it,—­we were like old friends.  I did not know one of them by name, but I did know who was married, and who had children; and how one man’s first child had been born since he left England, and no news from home because they had seen their mail wagon burn on the battlefield; and how one of them was only twenty, and had been six years in the army,—­lied when he enlisted; how none of them had ever seen war before; how they had always wanted to, and “Now,” said the twenty-years older, “I’ve seen it—­good Lord—­and all I want is to get home,” and he drew out of his breast pocket a photograph of a young girl in all her best clothes, sitting up very straight.

When I said, “Best girl?” he said proudly, “Only one, and we were to have been married in January if this hadn’t happened.  Perhaps we may yet, if we get home at Christmas, as they tell us we may.”

I wondered who he meant by “they.”  The officers did not give any such impression.

While I was gathering up towels and things before returning to the house, this youngster advanced toward me, and said with a half-shy smile, “I take it you’re a lady.”

I said I was glad he had noticed it—­I did make such an effort.

“No, no,” he said, “I’m not joking.  I may not say it very well, but I am quite serious.  We all want to say to you that if it is war that makes you and the women you live amongst so different from English women, then all we can say is that the sooner England is invaded and knows what it means to have a fighting army on her soil, and see her fields devastated and her homes destroyed, the better it will be for the race.  You take my word for it, they have no notion of what war is like; and there ain’t no English woman of your class could have, or would have, done for us what you have done this morning.  Why, in England the common soldier is the dirt under the feet of women like you.”

I had to laugh, as I told him to wait and see how they treated them when war was there; that they probably had not done the thing simply because they never had had the chance.

“Well,” he answered, “they’ll have to change mightily.  Why, our own women would have been uncomfortable and ashamed to see a lot of dirty men stripping and washing down like we have done.  You haven’t looked as if you minded it a bit, or thought of anything but getting us cleaned up as quick and comfortable as possible.”

I started to say that I felt terribly flattered that I had played the role so well, but I knew he would not understand.  Besides, I was wondering if it were true.  I never knew the English except as individuals, never as a race.  So I only laughed, picked up my towels, and went home to rest.

Not long before noon a bicycle scout came over with a message from Captain Edwards, and I sent by him a basket of eggs, a cold chicken, and a bottle of wine as a contribution to the breakfast at the officers’ mess; and by the time I had eaten my breakfast, the picket had been changed, and I saw no more of those boys.