“That’s why it’ll last so long,” she said.  “Because these officers of ours can’t learn anything.  Look at that muddle—­while men are dying on beyond.  You’d think they were a lot of schoolboys.  Haven’t they been told to keep one road for their up traffic and another road for their down traffic?  But they wouldn’t do it, because it was the British who told ’em.  But the British had found out, hadn’t they?  Catch them having a senseless mix-up like that!  But our men won’t listen.  They won’t even listen to me.  I’ve told one general and six or seven colonels only this morning.  Told the general to keep certain roads for troops and wagons going to the front, and other roads of traffic coming back to camps and depots, and all he could say was that he hoped to God there wouldn’t be another war until the women could staff it.”

“Hooray, hooray!” squeaked the listening private in a subdued falsetto not meant to be overheard.

Then he turned to stare up the street of broken shop fronts.  One of these diverted his attention from the nurse.  Above its door protruded a bush, its leaves long since withered.  He knew this for the sign of a wine shop, and with much effort regained his feet to hobble toward it.  He went far enough to note that the bush broke its promise of refreshment, for back of it was but dry desolation.

“Napoo!” he murmured in his best French, and turned to measure the distance back to his stone seat.  To this he again sauntered carelessly, as a gentleman walking abroad over his estate.

The second lieutenant was leaving the nurse by the extemporized portal of the church, though she seemed not to have done with exposing the incompetence of certain staff officers.  She still leaned wearily against the wall, vocal with irritation.

“Bawl ’em out, sister!  I think anything you think,” called the private.

Then from his stone seat he turned to survey the double line of marching men that issued from the street into the square.  They came now to a shuffling halt at a word of command relayed from some place beyond the bridge, where a new jumble of traffic could be dimly discerned.  The lines fell apart and the men sank to earth in the shade of the broken buildings across the square.  The private waved them a careless hand, with the mild interest of one who has been permanently dissevered from their activities.

One of them slouched over, gave the private a new cigarette, and slouched back to his resting mates.  In the act of lighting the cigarette the fat private noted that another of these reclining figures had risen and was staring fixedly either at him or at something beyond him.  He turned and perceived that the nurse and not himself must be the object of this regard.