Saturday night a very red-faced lad came up to the counter and insisted on conversing; from each pocket in his raincoat protruded a long-necked bottle. I stood it for a few minutes, then:
“Please,” I said, “won’t you take those bottles out of here? I just hate to see them.”
“Bottles!” he expostulated. “What do you mean, bottles!”
“I mean just those.” I pointed.
“Why I ain’t got a bottle on me!” he burst out indignantly, fairly glaring at me. Seeing it was hopeless, I edged away toward the other end of the counter, leaving him standing there, a perfect picture of outraged and insulted virtue, with those bottles bristling all over him.
The whole town is pervaded by a warm glow of geniality. Boys that used to nod shyly in answer to your “Good morning” now lean from their loft windows as you pass to call a greeting. Last night, my friend the M. P. tells me, he heard a racket in one of the sheepfolds up on our street. Going to investigate he met a “bunch o’ drunken wops” coming out of the door, every man of them carrying a struggling sheep under each arm. He shouted at them; they dropped the sheep and fled.
The French find it all vastly amusing. “Beaucoup zig zag,” they cry. It means, I suppose, riches for them.
And yet in all this orgy I have not yet encountered a single word of disrespect, nor heard one objectionable expression uttered. Last night I caught an angry splutter from the crowd in front of the counter. One boy, evidently a shade less tipsy, had admonished another boy apparently a shade more so, to be careful of his language out of respect for me. “Whu’d ’you think? D’you think I ain’t got sense enough to know how to talk when there’s an American lady present?” For a moment it looked as if there might be a fight.
Meanwhile the guard-house, the real guard-house, is so crowded that they have had to put duck-boards across the rafters for the prisoners to sleep on.
From a nearby town where part of another regiment is stationed come even more startling stories. Certain officers there went so wild that they started to blow up the town with hand grenades. And one of them coming into the Y. held up the secretary at the point of his pistol until he sold him—instead of the ordinary allowance of one or two packages—several cartons of his favorite brand of cigarettes.