"See you in two hours," says Lieutenant D——. "Let's have a poker game; I've got a patrol now."
"All right," I say, "I'll be here"—though I'm not very keen on French poker, which is somewhat different from ours.
The two hours pass in a wink of time as I lie in a steamer-chair, reading and reveling in the warm drowsy May afternoon. A sound of motors, the hollow whistling rush of landing single-seaters, and I glance out of the door. Here they come, lumbering across the field—but only four. I get up hastily and run to where the flight-commander is descending stiffly from his bus. His face is long, as we crowd around.
"Where's D——?" I ask anxiously.
"Brought down, I'm afraid," he answers. "We chased some two-seaters twenty-five miles into the Boche lines, and nine Albatrosses dropped on us. Got two of them, I think; but after the first mix-up, I lost track of D——, and he didn't come back with us."
A melancholy little procession heads for the bar, and while the affair is being reëxplained, the telephone rings.
"Lieutenant D—— has been found at X——. He was shot through the chest, but managed to regain our lines before he died. He was on the point of landing in a field when he lost consciousness. The machine is not badly smashed."
At a near-by table, a dice game, which started after lunch and has been interrupted to hear the news, continues. I resume my place in my chair and spread out the Paris "Herald"—unable to focus my mind on the steamship arrivals or the offensive. Poor old D——!
We have had lovely weather for the past fortnight—long warm days have made the trees burst into leaf and covered the meadows with wild-flowers. The quail have begun to nest—queer little fellows, quite unlike ours, whose love-song is, "Whit, twit, whit," with a strong emphasis on the first "whit."