be there for ever more. At home, all about
Frankfort, the farmers were cutting down their cottonwoods
because they were "common," planting maples and ash trees to
struggle along in their stead. Never mind; the cottonwoods were
good enough for France, and they were good enough for him! He
felt they were a real bond between him and this people.

When B Company had first got their orders to go into a training
camp in north central France, all the men were disappointed.
Troops much rawer than they were being rushed to the front, so
why fool around any longer? But now they were reconciled to the
delay. There seemed to be a good deal of France that wasn't the
war, and they wouldn't mind travelling about a little in a
country like this. Was the harvest always a month later than at
home, as it seemed to be this year? Why did the farmers have rows
of trees growing along the edges of every field--didn't they take
the strength out of the soil? What did the farmers mean by
raising patches of mustard right along beside other crops? Didn't
they know that mustard got into wheat fields and strangled the
grain?

The second night the boys were to spend in Rouen, and they would
have the following day to look about. Everybody knew what had
happened at Rouen--if any one didn't, his neighbours were only too
eager to inform him! It had happened in the market-place, and the
market-place was what they were going to find.

Tomorrow, when it came, proved to be black and cold, a day of
pouring rain. As they filed through the narrow, crowded streets,
that harsh Norman city presented no very cheering aspect. They
were glad, at last, to find the waterside, to go out on the
bridge and breathe the air in the great open space over the
river, away from the clatter of cart-wheels and the hard voices
and crafty faces of these townspeople, who seemed rough and
unfriendly. From the bridge they looked up at the white chalk
hills, the tops a blur of intense green under the low,
lead-coloured sky. They watched the fleets of broad, deep-set
river barges, coming and going under their feet, with tilted
smokestacks. Only a little way up that river was Paris, the place
where every doughboy meant to go; and as they leaned on the rail
and looked down at the slow-flowing water, each one had in his
mind a confused picture of what it would be like. The Seine, they
felt sure, must be very much wider there, and it was spanned by
many bridges, all longer than the brid