“Oi presoom the loidy and you don't mind, Yank, if Oi parley wi' yez a bit. Do yez?”
“No, come along; where did you come from?”
The man in khaki dragged an iron chair behind him to a spot near the table. Before sitting down he bobbed his head in the direction of Jeanne with an air of solemnity tugging at the same time at a lock of his red hair. After some fumbling he got a red-bordered handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face with it, leaving a long black smudge of machine oil on his forehead.
“Oi'm a bearer of important secret messages, Yank,” he said, leaning back in the little iron chair. “Oi'm a despatch-rider.”
“You look all in.”
“Not a bit of it. Oi just had a little hold up, that's all, in a woodland lane. Some buggers tried to do me in.”
“What d'you mean?”
“Oi guess they had a little information... that's all. Oi'm carryin' important messages from our headquarters in Rouen to your president. Oi was goin' through a bloody thicket past this side. Oi don't know how you pronounce the bloody town.... Oi was on my bike making about thoity for the road was all a-murk when Oi saw four buggers standing acrost the road... lookter me suspiciouslike, so Oi jus' jammed the juice into the boike and made for the middle 'un. He dodged all right. Then they started shootin' and a bloody bullet buggered the boike.... It was bein' born with a caul that saved me.... Oi picked myself up outer the ditch an lost 'em in the woods. Then Oi got to another bloody town and commandeered this old sweatin' machine.... How many kills is there to Paris, Yank?”
“Fifteen or sixteen, I think.”
“What's he saying, Jean?”