“Because he is so quiet, and blazes like the devil underneath.”

Under which mass of overwhelming proofs of nationality the Amie du Drapeau gave in.

“Yes, like enough.  Besides, the other one is English.  One of the Chasseurs d’Afrique tells me that the other one waits on him like a slave when he can—­cleans his harness, litters his horse, saves him all the hard work, when he can do it without being found out.  Where did they come from?”

“They will never tell.”

Cigarette tossed her nonchalant head, with a pout of her cherry lips, and a slang oath.

“Paf!—­they will tell it to me!”

“Thou mayest make a lion tame, a vulture leave blood, a drum beat its own rataplan, a dead man fire a musket; but thou wilt never make an Englishman speak when he is bent to be silent.”

Cigarette launched a choice missile of barrack slang and an array of metaphors, which their propounder thought stupendous in their brilliancy.

“When you stole your geese, you did but take your brethren home!  Englishmen are but men.  Put the wine in their head, make them whirl in a waltz, promise them a kiss, and one turns such brains as they have inside out, as a piou-piou turns a dead soldier’s wallet.  When a woman is handsome, she is never denied.  He shall tell me where he comes from.  I doubt that it is from England!  See here—­why not! first, he never says God-damn; second, he don’t eat his meat raw; third, he speaks very soft; fourth, he waltzes so light, so light! fifth, he never grumbles in his throat like an angry bear; sixth, there is no fog in him.  How can he be English with all that?”

“There are English, and English,” said the philosophic Tata, who piqued himself on being serenely cosmopolitan.

Cigarette blew a contemptuous puff of smoke.

“There was never one yet that did not growl!  Pauvres diables!  If they don’t use their tusks, they sit and sulk!—­an Englishman is always boxing or grumbling—­the two make up his life.”

Which view of Anglo-rabies she had derived from a profound study of various vaudevilles, in which the traditional God-damn was pre-eminent in his usual hues; and having delivered it, she sprang down from her wall, strapped on her little barrel, nodded to her gros bebees, where they lounged full-length in the shadow of the stone wall, and left them to resume their game at Boc, while she started on her way, as swift and as light as a chamois, singing, with gay, ringing emphasis that echoed all down the hot and silent air.

Hers was a dashing, dauntless, vivacious life, just in its youth, loving plunder, and mischief, and mirth; caring for nothing; and always ready with a laugh, a song, a slang repartee, or a shot from the dainty pistols thrust in her sash, that a general of division had given her, whichever best suited the moment.  She had never shed tears in her life.

Her mother a camp-follower, her father nobody knew who, a spoiled child of the Army from her birth, with a heart as bronzed as her cheek; yet with odd, stray, nature-sown instincts here and there, of a devil-may-care nobility, and of a wild grace that nothing could kill—­Cigarette was the pet of the Army of Africa, and was as lawless as most of her patrons.