h. "One would think you were a Silver
Pheasant--you grow such a little fool!"

Love was all very well, so Cigarette's philosophy had always reckoned;
a chocolate bonbon, a firework, a bagatelle, a draught of champagne, to
flavor an idle moment. "Vin et Venus" she had always been accustomed to
see worshiped together, as became their alliterative; it was a bit of
fun--that was all. A passion that had pain in it had never touched the
Little One; she had disdained it with the lightest, airiest contumely.
"If your sweetmeat has a bitter almond in it, eat the sugar and throw
the almond away, you goose! That is simple enough, isn't it? Bah? I
don't pity the people who eat the bitter almond; not I!" she had said
once, when arguing with an officer on the absurdity of a melancholy love
that possessed him, and whose sadness she rallied most unmercifully.
Now, for once in her young life, the Child of France found that it was
remotely possible to meet with almonds so bitter that the taste will
remain and taint all things, do what philosophy may to throw its
acridity aside.

With the reveille she awoke, herself again, though she had not had more
than an hour's slumber, it is true, with a dull ache at her heart
that was very new and bitterly unwelcome to her, but with the buoyant
vivacity and the proud carelessness of her nature in arms against it,
and with that gayety of childhood inherent to her repelling, and very
nearly successfully, the foreign depression that weighted on it.

Her first thought was to take care that he should never learn what she
had done for him. The Princesse Corona would not have been more utterly
disdained to solicit regard through making a claim upon gratitude than
the fiery little warrior of France would have done. She went straight to
the Tringlo who had known her at her mission of mercy.

"Georges, mon brave," said the Little One, with that accent of authority
which was as haughty as any General's, "do you know how that Chasseur is
that we brought in last night?"

"Not heard, ma belle," said the cheery little Tringlo, who was hard
pressed; for there was much to be done, and he was very busy.

"What is to be done with the wounded?"

Georges lifted his eyebrows.

"Ma belle! There are very few. There are hundreds of dead. The few there
are we shall take with an escort of Spahis to headquarters."

"Good. I will go with you. Have a heed, Georges, never to whisper that I
had anything to do with saving