For Americans during the year 1918, “Somewhere in France,” will mean the Joan of Arc country.  It is not in the war zone, but lies among the hills of Central France, a four or five hours’ auto ride from Paris.  To reach the American “Somewhere in France” from Paris, one crosses the battle-field of the Marne, and we passed it the day after the third anniversary, when all the hundreds of roadside graves that marked the French advance were a-bloom and a-flutter with the tri-colour.  Great doings were afoot the day before on that battle-field.  Bands had played triumphant songs, and orators had spoken and the leaders of France—­soldier and civilian—­had come out and wept and France had released her emotions and was better for it.  We passed through Meaux and hurried on east to St. Dizier, where we stopped for the night.  We put up at a dingy little inn, filled to overflowing with as curious a company as ever gathered under one roof.  Of course there were French soldiers—­scores of them, mostly officers in full dress, going to the line or coming from it.  Then there were fathers and mothers of soldiers and sisters and sweethearts of soldiers and wives of soldiers bound for the front or coming home.  And there we were, the only Americans in the house, with just enough French to order “des oeufs” and coffee “au lait” and “ros bif and jambon and pain” and to ask how much and then make them say it slowly and stick the sum up on their fingers.  We were having engine trouble.  And our car was groaning and coughing and muttering in the gloomy little court of the inn.  Around the court ran the sleeping rooms, and under one end, forty feet from the diningroom, was what was once the stable, and what now is the garage.  Frenchmen wandered up, looked at our chauffeur (from Utica, N. Y.) tried to diagnose the case, found we did not understand and then moved away.  But it was a twelve-cylinder American machine and the Frenchmen, discovering that, kept coming back to it.  As we sat on the cement platform of the tavern, kicking our heels against it and bemoaning the follies of youth which had corrupted our Freshman and Sophomore French, there came and sat beside us a pretty woman.  She had black snappy eyes, fresh dark skin, and jet black hair, so curly that it was almost frowsy.  She listened to us for a moment, then hopped aboard our talk like a boy flipping a street car:  “Kansas—­eh?  I once lived in Oklahoma City.  My father ran the Bee Hive!”

“Angels of mercy, angels of light!” This from me.  “Say, will you interpret for us?”

“Sure mike! sir,” she said.  And then added:  “And if it’s engine trouble my husband upstairs is a chauffeur.  Shall I get him?” And when she returned with him, he fell to, glad enough to get a look into a twelve-cylinder American car.  Henry stood by him, and with the woman acting as interlocutor, between our driver and her husband we soon had the trouble located and the dissimulator—­Henry maintains that all engine trouble is connected in some way with a dissimulator—­rectified, and while the job was going on, he expounded the twelve cylinders to the French, puffed on his dreadnaught pipe, and left the lady from Oklahoma City to me.  She was keen for talk.  Between her official communiques to her husband and our driver, she got in this: