Now he had in his pocket a letter from Peggy, received that morning, beginning “My dearest Marmaduke.” Peggy seemed far away, and the name still farther. He was deliberating whether he should say “Appelez-moi James” or “Appelez-moi Jacques,” and inclining to the latter as being more picturesque and intimate, when she went on:
“Tenez, what is it your comrades call you? ‘Doggie’?”
“Say that again.”
“Dog-gie.”
He had never dreamed that the hated appellation could sound so adorable. Well—no one except his officers called him by any other name, and it came with a visible charm from her lips. It brought about the most fascinating flash of the tips of her white teeth. He laughed.
“A la guerre comme à la guerre. If you call me that, you belong to the regiment. And I promise you, it is a fine regiment.”
“Eh bien, Monsieur Dog-gie——”
“There’s no monsieur about it,” he declared, very happily. “Tommies are not messieurs.”
“I know one who is,” said Jeanne.
So they talked in a young and foolish way, and Jeanne for a while forgot the tragedies that had gone and the tragedies that might come; and Doggie forgot both the peacock and ivory room and the fetid hole into which he would have to creep when the night’s march was over. They talked of simple things. Of Toinette, who had been with Aunt Morin ever since she could remember.