“I should think you’d have had about enough.”

“Oh, a fellow can’t stay out after all his chums have been killed!  He’d think about it all the time, you know,” the boy replied in his clear treble.

Claude and Hicks got into Headquarters just as the cooks were turning out to build their fires.  One of the Corporals took them to the officers’ bath,—­a shed with big tin tubs, and carried away their uniforms to dry them in the kitchen.  It would be an hour before the officers would be about, he said, and in the meantime he would manage to get clean shirts and socks for them.

“Say, Lieutenant,” Hicks brought out as he was rubbing himself down with a real bath towel, “I don’t want to hear any more about those Pal Battalions, do you?  It gets my goat.  So long as we were going to get into this, we might have been a little more previous.  I hate to feel small.”  “Guess we’ll have to take our medicine,” Claude said dryly, “There wasn’t anywhere to duck, was there?  I felt like it.  Nice little kid.  I don’t believe American boys ever seem as young as that.”

“Why, if you met him anywhere else, you’d be afraid of using bad words before him, he’s so pretty!  What’s the use of sending an orphan asylum out to be slaughtered?  I can’t see it,” grumbled the fat sergeant.  “Well, it’s their business.  I’m not going to let it spoil my breakfast.  Suppose we’ll draw ham and eggs, Lieutenant?”

X

After breakfast Claude reported to Headquarters and talked with one of the staff Majors.  He was told he would have to wait until tomorrow to see Colonel James, who had been called to Paris for a general conference.  He had left in his car at four that morning, in response to a telephone message.

“There’s not much to do here, by way of amusement,” said the Major.  “A movie show tonight, and you can get anything you want at the estaminet,—­the one on the square, opposite the English tank, is the best.  There are a couple of nice Frenchwomen in the Red Cross barrack, up on the hill, in the old convent garden.  They try to look out for the civilian population, and we’re on good terms with them.  We get their supplies through with our own, and the quartermaster has orders to help them when they run short.  You might go up and call on them.  They speak English perfectly.”

Claude asked whether he could walk in on them without any kind of introduction.

“Oh, yes, they’re used to us!  I’ll give you a card to Mlle. Olive, though.  She’s a particular friend of mine.  There you are:  ‘Mlle. Olive de Courcy, introducing, etc.’  And, you understand,” here he glanced up and looked Claude over from head to foot, “she’s a perfect lady.”

Even with an introduction, Claude felt some hesitancy about presenting himself to these ladies.  Perhaps they didn’t like Americans; he was always afraid of meeting French people who didn’t.  It was the same way with most of the fellows in his battalion, he had found; they were terribly afraid of being disliked.  And the moment they felt they were disliked, they hastened to behave as badly as possible, in order to deserve it; then they didn’t feel that they had been taken in—­the worst feeling a doughboy could possibly have!