“Say, are there any seconds on this?”
“Lady,” said one lad solemnly to me, “with pudding like that I could stay four years more in the army.”
One of the divisions from the lines arrived in this area, a few days ago, for a short period of rest. A number of the men are encamped up on the hill near the old Artillery School and they come straying down to our hut. Poor lads, it is pitiful to see how wonderful it seems to them to be in a place that is clean and pretty.
“This looks like a bit of heaven to me,” declared one boy.
Another, sitting in the Tea Room stirring his chocolate, commented, “Gee, this is a swell place in here. You ought ter get some fancy name for it.”
“What would you suggest?”
“Well I should think,” he looked around, “you might call it Canary Cottage.”
Yet occasionally I wonder if it really all pays, as when I pick out the cigar butts which, in spite of the trash boxes beneath the tables, the boys will persist in sticking in the vases of flowers and planting in the geranium pots, or when, as last night, I catch a fellow using one of the beautiful chintz runners from the tables with which to wipe the mud off his boots.
Abainville, August 21.
Talk kills men.