This was too much. I hurried from the room.
This morning Monsieur accused me of being a coquette. Hotly I denied the charge. But why then, he rejoined triumphantly, had I asked for a looking-glass in my bed-room?
Bourmont, January 9.
Company A is going to China! Somebody heard somebody say that somebody told him that the Chaplain had said so. The boys are all excitement over the idea.
“Won’t that be jolly! You’ll all be coming home with little shiny pigtails hanging down your backs!” I tease them.
“Yes sir! an’ we’ll learn to eat our chow with chopsticks!” I have solemnly promised the boys that if Company A goes to China I will go too. What’s more I will learn to make Chop Suey for them. I have always wanted to visit China.
Thus does the army rumor make sport of us. Reports of this sort incessantly spring up among us, flourish for a day, to be forgotten on the morrow. It is just a sign I suppose of the restlessness that is rife among the boys, the nostalgia, the rebellion at the grinding monotony of their lives. Half the men in the company, it seems, have gone to their officers begging to be transferred into one of the two divisions that have already been in the lines.
“I’m sick o’ this kind o’ life; what I came over here for was to fight,” they growl.
In the canteen they look at the French National Loan poster which has the Statue of Liberty on it, and speculate as to their chances of ever seeing her again.
“Oh boy! but I bet there’ll be some noise on board ship when we catch sight o’ that ol’ gal again!”