From the Frenchwoman, “Oh, Madame, please what is it they want now? I have shown them everything in sight. How strange that they can’t understand the simplest language!”
The little misunderstanding was soon cleared away. I lingered by the counter. “How do you like our American troops, Madame?” I asked. “Very well, very much indeed, if only they could talk. They don’t do any harm. They are good to the children. They are certainly as brave as men can be. But there is one thing about them I don’t understand. They overpay you, often, more than you ask—won’t take change—and yet if you leave things open, as we always do, in front of the shop, they just put their hands in and steal as they go by. I have lost a great deal in that way. If they have so much money, why do they steal?”
I contemplated making, and gave it up as too difficult, a short disquisition on the peculiarities of the American orchard-robbing tradition with its ramifications, and instead sat down at the table with the Americans, who gave me the greeting always repeated, “Great Scott! its good to talk to an American woman!”
A fresh-faced, splendidly built lad, looked up from the first bite of his melon, crying: “Yes suh, a cantaloupe, a’ honest-to-the-Lawd cantaloupe! I neveh thought they’d heahd of such a thing in France.”
They explained to me, all talking at once, pouring out unasked military information till my hair rose up scandalized, that this was their first experience with semi-normal civilian life in France because they belonged to the troops from Georgia, volunteers, that they had been in the front-line trenches at exactly such a place for precisely so many weeks where such and such things happened, and before that at such another place, where they were so many strong, etc., etc.
“So we neveh saw real sto’s to buy things till we struck this town. And when I saw a cantaloupe I mighty nigh dropped daid! I don’t reckon I’m likely to run into a watermelon, am I? I suahly would have to be ca’ied back to camp on a stretcheh if I did!” He laughed out, a boy’s cloudless laughter. “But say, what do you-all think? I paid fo’ty-five cents for this slice, yes, ma’am, fo’ty-five cents for a slice, and back home in Geo’gia you pay a nickel for the biggest one in the sto’!” He buried his face in the yellow fruit.
The house began to shake to the ponderous passage of artillery. The boys in khaki turned their stag-like heads toward the street, glanced at the motley-colored, mule-drawn guns and pronounced expertly, “The 43rd, Heavy Artillery, going out to Nolepieds, the fellows from Illinois. They’ve just been up in the Verdun sector and are coming down to reinforce the 102nd.”
For the first time the idea crossed my head that possibly their mania for pouring out military information to the first comer might not be so fatal to necessary secrecy as it seemed. I rather pitied the spy who might attempt to make coherent profit out of their candor. “How do you like being in France?” I asked the boy who was devouring the melon.
He looked up, his eyes kindling, “Well, I was plumb crazy to get heah and now I’m heah I like it mo’ even than I ’lowed I would.” I looked at his fresh, unlined boy’s cheeks, his clear, bright boy’s eyes, and felt a great wave of pity. “You haven’t been in active service yet,” I surmised.
Unconsciously, gayly, he flung my pity back in my face, “You bet yo’ life I have. We’ve just come from the Champagne front, and the sehvice we saw theah was suah active, how about it, boys?”