"Ah, M'sieu s'amuse," said Madame, brightening up. No, her husband was a chef at an officers' mess in Paris, she explained proudly. He had been there since the war broke out. He would soon come home, the Saints be praised. Then the Captain would hear him tell his tales of life in the Army!
The hero came home one day, and great was the rejoicing. Thrilling evenings the family spent around the stove while they listened to stories of great deeds. On the day when his permission was finished, and he set out for his hazardous post once more, great was the lamenting. Madame wept. All the brave man's relatives poured in to kiss him good-bye. The departing soldier wept, himself. Even Grand'mère desisted for that day from cracking jokes, which she was always doing in a patois that to Talbot was unintelligible.
But they were very kind to Talbot, and very courageous through the hard winter. When he lay ill with fever in his little low room, where the frost whitened the plaster and icicles hung from the ceiling, Madame and all the others were most solicitous for his comfort. His appreciation and thanks were sincere.
By the middle of December the Battalion had finally settled down and we began our training. Our first course of study was in the mechanism of the tanks. We marched down, early one morning, to an engine hangar that was both cold and draughty. We did not look in the least like embryo heroes. Over our khaki we wore ill-fitting blue garments which men on the railways, who wear them, call "boilers." The effect of wearing them was to cause us to slouch along, and suddenly Talbot burst out laughing at the spectacle. Then he remembered having heard that some of the original "Tankers" had, during the Somme battles, been mistaken for Germans in their blue dungarees. They had been fired on from some distance away, by their own infantry; though nothing fatal ensued. In consequence, before the next "show" chocolate ones were issued.
In the shadows of the engine shed, a gray armour-plated hulk loomed up.
"There it is!" cried Gould, and started forward for a better look at the "Willie."
Across the face of Rigden, the instructor, flashed a look of scorn and pain. Just such a look you may have seen on the face of a young mother when you refer to her baby as "it."
"Don't call a tank 'it,' Gould," he said with admirable patience. "A tank is either 'he' or 'she'; there is no 'it.'"
"In Heaven's name, what's the difference?" asked Gould, completely mystified. The rest of us were all ears.
"The female tank carries machine guns only," Rigden explained. "The male tank carries light field guns as well as machine guns. Don't ever make the mistake again, any of you fellows."