“Shall I lift you up?” he asked.
“Mais non. You cannot. I am of such a largeness!... But I shall see.”
“I’ll sit you on my shoulder and tell folks you are my granddaughter,” he said.
“Regardez!” She took a small rectangular mirror from her sac and held it before his eyes. Then she turned her back on the parade and, holding the mirror at an angle above her head, looked into it with quaint intentness.
“Oh, I see!” she exclaimed. “Behol’, the parade it marches in the glass.”
Ken laughed, but he was a trifle annoyed and embarrassed. Andree herself, he thought, was so natural, so herself, that she would have not the least thought in the world of making herself ridiculous or conspicuous, but this absurd makeshift of hers would certainly attract the attention of the crowd—and nobody knew what a Parisian crowd might do. He hesitated, looked about him uncomfortably, and decided to hold his peace. It was well, for within a radius of thirty feet a dozen men and women were doing exactly as Andree did. They had come prepared. Each of them stood facing away from the procession, a mirror held above the heads of the crowd, and it was with difficulty Kendall restrained his laughter. Their expressions were all so eager, so interested. It was absurd. With all that was going on behind them, they peered as if bewitched into rectangles of glass, and shouted, or lowered their mirrors to clap their hands just as if they were seeing living soldiers instead of tiny reflections....
The crowd interested him more than the marching men. There was a good-natured simplicity, a lack of reserve, a childishness about them, yet there were a bigness, a pathos, and a grandeur in their bearing.... Boys and young men mounted into trees; couples carrying bouquets scurried up and down the line, seeking a point where they might penetrate to the street; here was a woman weeping and smiling at once. She was in black.... And everywhere flowers! Now and then a girl would run out from the curb to hand a blossom to some poilu or Italian or Englishman or Portuguese.... Every French soldier marched with a smile and with a posy nodding from the muzzle of his gun. The street was thick with flowers and the air rained flowers.
The Americans passed. In their guns were no blossoms, on their tunics were no bouquets. They marched very stiffly, erect, business-like, with eyes to the front. The French had shuffled by jovially with nods and smiles. One could tell they had seen the war and were marching men, but there was no stiffness, no rigidity. They were like the defense of their great general—elastic. The Italians grinned cheerfully; so did the Portuguese; even the English were somewhat relaxed—but all these had known four years of war.... The Americans, marching like one man, like a splendid machine, seemed, somehow, sterner, of more warlike stuff. They struck the eye and won the applause of the multitude.... But they were of no sterner stuff, nor would they have asserted themselves to be better fighting-men than the sturdy poilus or the wiry Tommies.... They were younger—that was what impressed one. Their youth cried aloud.... Amid those soldiers of France and England and Italy and Belgium they looked like boys—and yet their age might not have been greater than these others—for the others had seen four years of war.... But they were splendid, these young men from another world, and the heart of Paris went out to them....
A hand touched Kendall’s arm and he turned.
“Why, Maude!” he exclaimed, and shot a startled glance toward Andree.