At last she said: “You—I don’t suppose you’ve seen that Mr. Burton anywhere, have you?”
“We saw something of him in Paris,” I replied, and glanced out the window. He was standing across what had once been the street, and if ever I’ve seen hungry eyes in a human being he had them.
“He was so awfully touchy, Miss Lizzie,” she said. “And then I was never sure—— Why do you suppose he isn’t fighting? Not that it’s any affair of mine, but I used to wonder.”
“He’s got a milk leg,” I said, and set the coffee kettle off.
“A milk leg! A milk—— Oh, how ridiculous! How—— Why, Miss Lizzie, how can he?”
“Don’t ask me. They get ’em sometimes too. They’re very painful. My cousin, Nancy Lee McMasters, had one after her third child and——”
I am sorry to say that here she began to laugh. She laughed all over the hut, really, and when she had stood up and held to the plank and laughed she sat down on a box of condensed milk and laughed again. I am a truthful woman, and I had thought it was time she knew the facts, but I saw at once that I had make a mistake. And when I looked out the window Mr. Burton had gone.
I remained there with her for some time, but as any mention of Mr. Burton only started her off again we discussed other matters.
She said Charlie Sands was in the Intelligence Department at the Front, and that when he left he was about to, as she termed it, pull off a raid.
“He’s gone to bring me a German as a souvenir; and that Captain Weber—you remember him—he is going to bring me another,” she cried. “He gave me my choice and I took an officer, with a nice upcurled mustache and——”