"Canteen service—she pictured the work minus the tonic of danger as a social job. Dressed in a blue smock and white coif she would bid a graceful farewell to the A. E. F. as it filtered out of Europe. Now she smiles. Needed? Her fingers are scarred and she wonders if she ever will be able to pour one thousand bowls of coffee from the gigantic white porcelain pitcher without blistering her hands.
"Each day she looks at the line of men jostling one another at the door. She listens to their interminable questions and comes to the full realization that she is one of the most important people in Paris, one of two hundred girls feeding thirty-five thousand soldiers daily.
"As some workers leaving for home after more than a year of service tell of making sandwiches under shell fire, of sleeping by the roadside in the woods to fool the boche flyers who bombed the Red Cross buildings, she still feels the sly nip of envy. But soldiers do not cease to be soldiers and heroes when the war is done.
"Other puddles formed on the table and she mopped them up. She had used three towels during her eight-hour shift. A soldier, one of the thousands passing daily through the six Paris stations on their way home, journeying to leave areas, going to join the Army of Occupation or assigned to duty in the city, called to her.
"'Sister, I want to show you something,' he said, and unwrapped a highly decorative circlet of aluminum. It was a napkin ring which he had bought from a poilu who made it of scraps from the battlefield. There was an elaborate monogram engraved on a small copper shield.
"'For my mother,' he explained. 'If you don't think it is good enough I will get something else.'
"At once fifty rival souvenirs were produced. Men came from other tables to exhibit their own. There was the real collector who bemoaned the theft of a 'belt made by a Russian prisoner in Germany and decorated with the buttons of every army in the world including the fire department of Holland.'
"One of the new arrivals had hands stiffened from recently healed wounds. She brought his plate of baked beans, roast meat, potatoes, a bowl of coffee, and pudding. A young Canadian with flaming, rosy cheeks divided the last doughnut with his friend, the Anzac. Crullers are the greatest influence in canteen for the general friendliness among soldiers of different armies. A League of Nations could be founded upon them if negotiations were left to the privates about the oilcloth-covered tables.
"The boy with the crippled hands protested that he did not want to accept a dinner for which there was so little charge.
"'Say, Miss,' he said, 'I can pay more. I don't have to be sponging.'