“Sorry, Buddy!” he called to the driver, “but you can’t do that!”
Then, approaching, he got a closer view, turned red as fire and stammered;
“Beg your pardon, Miss. Made a mistake. That’s all right, driver, you can go on.”
Later he sent apologies to me at the canteen. It is, of course, against regulations to allow civilian women to use army transportation. The M. P., catching sight of a skirt, had taken me for a Mademoiselle on a joy-ride.
Conflans, April 7.
We must start an Orphans’ Annex here, the boys tell me. Three nights ago as it was drawing on toward closing time the Chief called me into the office. By the table stood two young boys, about fourteen and sixteen I judged them; each carried on his shoulder a little sack which evidently contained all his worldly possessions. They were German boys from Metz; they had just come in on the train. Why had they come? we asked them. They had come to join the American army. But they were too young! He was eighteen, declared the elder. He dug into his pockets and produced documents. I looked at two of the papers, they appeared to be the birth certificates of his father and mother. Had his parents given their consent? He nodded. “And you really are eighteen?”, “Ja! Ja wohl!” It was hard to believe,—he was so small. We stared at them a bit helplessly. Then, finding our German not quite adequate to the occasion, we called an interpreter. But to all the interpreter’s questioning the boy returned the same unvarying answer. He had come to join the American army! As for the younger one, he merely stood and smiled and looked as guileless as a young angel. Whatever the elder one’s intention might be, I was sure I could divine the younger’s. He, I am certain, had set his heart on being an American “mascot.” And he, for all his innocent and engaging air, had most patently run away from home!
We told the boys that we would put them up for the night. I busied myself in getting them some supper and then—another waif appeared! A little French lad of thirteen, with a peg-leg and a crutch, he came shyly hobbling into the office, and the face he lifted to us was one of the sweetest, the most sensitive and appealing that I have ever seen. Silently he tendered us a letter. It had been written by an American lieutenant; the bearer, it stated, was an orphan of the war; he had been shot by German machine-gunners near Verdun; his right leg had been amputated at the thigh. I looked at the crippled child in apprehension. How would he take the presence of the Germans? But my question was already answered. The little German lad and the French mutilé had drawn close together, seemingly drawn instantly to each other by a bond of childish understanding. Although neither could speak the other’s speech they appeared to be communicating in some shy wordless way. Later, as we were getting the cots ready for the lodgers, passing the empty canteen room, I glanced inside. Somebody had started the victrola on the counter to playing a waltz, and to its music the German boys were dancing while the little French lad gaily kept time with his crutch!
We fed the three of them and put them up for the night. The next morning the French lad took his leave. Later he came back to see us dressed in a little American uniform; he had been adopted by one of the companies here. The German lads stayed with us, or rather, they slept and ate with the M. P.s next door and spent the rest of the day with us in the canteen. They loved to help about the counter; they were quick and deft and willing. The only trouble with the arrangement was that I fairly went distracted trying to talk three languages at once!
Two days afterwards, the M. P.s having taken the matter in hand, the German boys were sent back to Metz. But the French lad comes in often to visit us. We see him playing ball with the soldiers in the street in front of the hotel. This morning the S. A. and I stood watching him.
“I wouldn’t mind it so much somehow,” the S. A. remarked, “if he didn’t have that wrap-legging wound so tight around that pitiful little peg-stick!”