But the best of blood was not new to her in the ranks of the Algerian regiments; she had known so many of them—those gilded butterflies of the Chaussee d'Antin, those lordly spendthrifts of the vieille roche, who had served in the battalions of the demi-cavalry, or the squadrons of the French Horse, to be thrust, nameless and unhonored, into a sand-hole hastily dug with bayonets in the hot hush of an African night.
She woke him unceremoniously from his reverie, with a challenge to wine.
“Ah, ha! Tata Leroux says you are English; by the faith, he must be right, or you would never sit musing there like an owl in the sunlight! Take a draught of my burgundy; bright as rubies. I never sell bad wines—not I! I know better than to drink them myself.”
He started and rose; and, before he took the little wooden drinking-cup, bowed to her, raising his cap with a grave, courteous obeisance; a bow that had used to be noted in throne-rooms for its perfection of grace.
“Ah, ma belle, is it you?” he said wearily. “You do me much honor.”
Cigarette gave a little petulant twist to the tap of her wine-barrel. She was not used to that style of salutation. She half liked it—half resented it. It made her wish, with an impatient scorn for the wish, that she knew how to read and had not her hair cut short like a boy's—a weakness the little vivandiere had never been visited with before.
“Morbleu!” she said pettishly. “You are too fine for us mon brave. In what country, I should wonder, does one learn such dainty ceremony as that?”
“Where should one learn courtesies, if not in France?” he answered wearily. He had danced with this girl-soldier the night before at a guinguette ball, seeing her for the first time, for it was almost the first time he had been in the city since the night when he had thrown the dice, and lost ten Napoleons and the Bedouins to Claude de Chanrellon; but his thoughts were far from her in this moment.
“Ouf! You have learnt carte and tierce with your tongue!” cried Cigarette, provoked to receive no more compliment than that. From generals and staff officers, as from drummers and trumpeters, she was accustomed to flattery and wooing, luscious as sugared chocolate, and ardent as flirtation, with a barrack flavor about it, commonly is; she would, as often as not, to be sure, finish it with the butt-end of her pistol, or the butt-end of some bit of stinging sarcasm, but still, for all that, she liked it, and resented its omission. “They say you are English, but I don't believe it; you speak too soft, and you sound the double L's too well. A Spaniard?”
“Do you find me so devout a Catholic that you think so?”