“Ain't a-goin' to be no roll call. Corporal tole me his-self. Sarge's gone out to git stewed, an' the Loot's away.”
“Sure,” said another man, “we kin stay out as late's we goddam please tonight.”
“There's a new M.P. in town,” said Chrisfield.... “Ah saw him maself.... You did, too, didn't you, Andy?”
Andrews nodded. He was looking at the Frenchman, who sat with his face in shadow and his black lashes covering his eyes. A purplish flash had suffused the olive skin at his cheekbones.
“Oh, boy,” said Chrisfield. “That ole wine sure do go down fast.... Say, Antoinette, got any cognac?”
“I'm going to have some more wine,” said Andrews.
“Go ahead, Andy; have all ye want. Ah want some-thin' to warm ma guts.”
Antoinette brought a bottle of cognac and two small glasses and sat down in an empty chair with her red hands crossed on her apron. Her eyes moved from Chrisfield to the Frenchman and back again.
Chrisfield turned a little round in his chair and looked at the Frenchman, feeling in his eyes for a moment a glance of the man's yellowish-brown eyes.
Andrews leaned back against the wall sipping his dark-colored wine, his eyes contracted dreamily, fixed on the shadow of the chandelier, which the cheap oil-lamp with its tin reflector cast on the peeling plaster of the wall opposite.