“Pretty good. I used to perform that way myself when I was a boy, but I never was quite as limber as that. To tell you the truth I haven’t had such a reminder of home since I left. It’s lucky I know his kind or he’d be reported. What about this—Gus is his name?”
“I don’t know. I suppose he is on leave. He heads straight for this place the minute he gets a furlough, and all because I was good to him that first day when he came in with a broken head. The war is over, really?”
“Practically, though, confound it, my regiment wasn’t in the front line when they sent over the last shot. I’m here instead of there.”
“On leave?”
“On my way from Paris, official business.”
“But you will be coming back this way again soon?”
“I hope so.”
“And when do you return home?”
“That’s something no fellow can find out. I may hang around for months, may go any time. I must run in for a brief moment to see your mother and then I’m off.”
After his one day of proud celebration when he enjoyed to the fullest his position as central attraction, Gus Fitchett faded out of sight, and was seen no more in those parts, though one day, weeks later, came a postcard from Boulogne, a gay and giddy Christmas card bearing in crooked and weird handwriting Lucie’s name. “Mery Crismuss and good-by Mis Lucy. I salin fo home,” it read.