B Company lost nineteen men in the raid.  Two days later the Company went off on a ten-day leave.  Claude’s sprained ankle was twice its natural size, but to avoid being sent to the hospital he had to march to the railhead.  Sergeant Hicks got him a giant shoe he found stuck on the barbed wire entanglement.  Claude and Gerhardt were going off on their leave together.

XII

A rainy autumn night; Papa Joubert sat reading his paper.  He heard a heavy pounding on his garden gate.  Kicking off his slippers, he put on the wooden sabots he kept for mud, shuffled across the dripping garden, and opened the door into the dark street.  Two tall figures with rifles and kits confronted him.  In a moment he began embracing them, calling to his wife: 

“Nom de diable, Maman, c’est David, David et Claude, tous les deux!”

Sorry-looking soldiers they appeared when they stood in the candlelight, plastered with clay, their metal hats shining like copper bowls, their clothes dripping pools of water upon the flags of the kitchen floor.  Mme. Joubert kissed their wet cheeks, and Monsieur, now that he could see them, embraced them again.  Whence had they come, and how had it fared with them, up there?  Very well, as anybody could see.  What did they want first,—­supper, perhaps?  Their room was always ready for them; and the clothes they had left were in the big chest.

David explained that their shirts had not once been dry for four days; and what they most desired was to be dry and to be clean.  Old Martha, already in bed, was routed out to heat water.  M. Joubert carried the big washtub upstairs.  Tomorrow for conversation, he said; tonight for repose.  The boys followed him and began to peel off their wet uniforms, leaving them in two sodden piles on the floor.  There was one bath for both, and they threw up a coin to decide which should get into the warm water first.  M. Joubert, seeing Claude’s fat ankle strapped up in adhesive bandages, began to chuckle.  “Oh, I see the Boche made you dance up there!”

When they were clad in clean pyjamas out of the chest, Papa Joubert carried their shirts and socks down for Martha to wash.  He returned with the big meat platter, on which was an omelette made of twelve eggs and stuffed with bacon and fried potatoes.  Mme. Joubert brought the three-story earthen coffee-pot to the door and called, “Bon appetit!” The host poured the coffee and cut up the loaf with his clasp knife.  He sat down to watch them eat.  How had they found things up there, anyway?  The Boches polite and agreeable as usual?  Finally, when there was not a crumb of anything left, he poured for each a little glass of brandy, “pour cider la digestion,” and wished them good-night.  He took the candle with him.