He looked at me side-wise. “Rebecca gave me lessons,” he answered grinning.
Last night, as we passed Rebecca’s house, I noticed that her door was the least bit ajar.
As Bill left me at my gate I admonished him; “Now don’t you stop to say good-night to Rebecca.”
“Gosh, no!” said Bill, “if I did I’m afraid I might have to hurry or I’d be late for breakfast.”
Whenever I meet Rebecca on the street she always bows to me most urbanely.
Nor is Rebecca all my concern in relation to Big Bill. There is also the pretty girl who lives down the street who undoubtedly would not be averse to accompanying him to America. Bill stops at her house every night in order to get a quart of fresh milk for the C. O.’s breakfast. I bid him be wary of these Franco-American alliances, citing horrible examples I have known, such as the machine-gunner, for instance, who, in order to be in harmony with his future family-in-law, felt it incumbent on him to appear at his wedding wearing a pair of wooden shoes; and of the doughboy who married a widow with two children, and, since he knew no French and she no English, persuaded his company commander to detail an interpreter to live in the house with them for the first three days after their marriage.
Not many days ago a girl came to my kitchen door in company with a soldier. She had a United States paymaster’s cheque which she wished to have cashed. Afterwards I questioned Bill. It seems a lieutenant had married and afterwards divorced her. She was still drawing his allotment. She looked so thoroughly the peasant, bare-headed, in a shawl and shoddy skirt, with nothing to particularly distinguish her pretty but inexpressive face, that I voiced my wonder to the boys.
“Oh but you ought to see her when she gets dressed up!” they said.
“Fine feathers don’t make fine birds,” I remind severely. “Bill, be warned!”
“Yes, but there’s Gaby,” Bill suggests. “What about her?” Now Gaby is the little chauffeuse who has been driver for a French general three years and who turns up periodically in town. She is quaint as a wood-cut and solemn as an owl, with her shock of bobbed hair and her great staring child-like eyes. She sits at the mess table and never says a word but draws your glance irresistibly. Always she wears an odd little straight-cut dress hanging just below her knees and a croix de guerre pinned to her breast. Gaby killed a man with her car not long since and was held a prisoner at Ligny-en-Barrois for ten days in consequence. Gaby and one of the sergeants at the A. R. are undergoing all the woe and wonder of love’s young dream.