We had our Christmas dinner at the Bons Enfants. It was not home, but it was very jolly. Jolly is the word rather than happy. At home the grub would not have been French. There would have been sisters (and others) with whom to make merry afterwards. And we would (we hope) have been served by someone less unlovely than the well-meaning middle-aged woman whom madame detailed to wait upon our table. But we sang long and loud in chorus; and afterwards went into the hall and took possession of the piano and danced with each other; and those who couldn't dance improvised some sort of rhythmic evolutions about the room. At any rate, we were gay. We were determined that absence from home was not going to seem to make us sad. And perhaps some of us forced the merriment rather obviously. But madame, I believe, thought we were completely happy. She came and shook us all by the hand at parting, and gave us good wishes, and was happy she should have helped us so far to Christmas jollity in "a furrin clime." Someone reproached her with the plebeian features of our waitress when we had got out into the shelter of the street, and someone—I forget who—kissed her (i.e., madame) in the shadow of the porch; and she gave a gentle little scream of delight, retrospective of the days of her blooming youth when she was more prone to thoroughgoing reciprocity.
We returned some weeks later. Someone of the mess had a birthday, and went down in the morning to madame and in the sunny courtyard talked to her intimately of pullets, and poisson, and boisson, and omelettes, and wafers, and cheeses, and fruits; returned to the mess before lunch, furtively countermanded the standing orders amongst the servants for the evening meal, and at lunch flung out a general invitation to the Bons Enfants at eight. We lived again through the Christmas festivities—with the difference that madame detailed a less unhandsome wench to wait on table; and that we left earlier.
CHAPTER VI
PROVINCIAL SHOPS
All magasins of any standing are served by pretty girls. This is a point of policy. Proprietors of French shops in the towns of the War area have come to know that the man to whom they sell is largely the English officer in rest about the town or on his way through it. He also knows enough of the psychology of the English officer to be sure that if his shop is known to be served by pretty girls, the officer who has been segregated from women for three months will enter, ostensibly to purchase, actually to talk with the girls; also that every time he wishes to see pretty girls he will make a purchase the pretext, and will not be dismayed by the frequency of his purchases nor by their price. To the officer from the line feminine intercourse is reckoned cheap at the price of socks and ties.
They know the temper of the man in rest from the trenches; he will have what he likes, and hang the price. So they ask what they like, and get it. This is, of course, hard on the man permanently stationed in the town; but it is not for him they cater. And even should he refuse to buy at all, it is nothing to them. They can batten on the traveller and the man in rest, and they do.
The best-remembered shops in D—— are the provision shop (agent for Félix Potin), the newspaper shop opposite the Hôtel de Ville, the boot shop in the Rue ——, the pipe shop in the Rue ——.
Félix Potin's agency is proprieted by a masterful woman, extremely handsome and well-figured. She is consciously proud of this as she sits at the receipt of custom and directs the policy. She is a very able business woman. She is never baffled by the smallest detail referred to her by an underling. She knows the price of the smallest bottle of perfume (though there she may, of course, be improvising—and with safety). If stock has been exhausted in any commodity she knows when its reinforcements will arrive from Paris. She herself does the Parisian buying. The whole town knows when she has been to Paris, and when she will be going next. She makes a knowledge of these buying-excursions intimate to all her considerable patrons. Her periodical trips are parochial events. You will hear one officer say to another in an English mess: "Oh, Madame —— is off to Paris on Sunday;" or, "Madame —— will be back to-morrow." This is very flattering, and very good for business.