Little Mild Gentleman
The little mild gentleman of teacups and cakes—so useful when there were people who simply had to be asked—always ready to fill a place, considerate of old ladies—of course, they did not want him at the Front. He had rather bad lungs, or something, and was shortsighted at that; it was absurd of him even to try to get out—no army doctor would pass him.
After months and months of effort, he at last succeeded in getting himself taken on for ammunition work and the making of poison gases.
Somebody met him the other day, strutting along in his blue coat and red trousers. Very hurried and important, he had yet to stop and tell all about it, his tea-party manner quite vanished away, his shortsighted eyes no longer mild.
"It is I who tell you," he said, "I who know well, there will not a single one of them be left alive within miles and miles of this new stuff we are making."
Gossip
Since his death she has been nursing in a typhus hospital, somewhere just behind the lines. It is now more than ten months. No one has seen her, scarcely any one has heard from her. Some people say that she is doing "wonderful work" and some people say that it is all pose, and some people say that she has an affair with the chief doctor of the hospital, or is it with the maire of the town? No one has seen her, but every one says she has lost her looks.
She used to be very pretty, and a great favourite in the world. She looked absurdly like her two babies.
The babies are at the château with their grandmother, his mother, who is an invalid—two lovely cherubs at the age of Russian blouses.
The house off the Avenue du Bois, that used to be one of the most charming in Paris, has been closed since the war.