a perfect lady."

Even with an introduction, Claude felt some hesitancy about
presenting himself to these ladies. Perhaps they didn't like
Americans; he was always afraid of meeting French people who
didn't. It was the same way with most of the fellows in his
battalion, he had found; they were terribly afraid of being
disliked. And the moment they felt they were disliked, they
hastened to behave as badly as possible, in order to deserve it;
then they didn't feel that they had been taken in--the worst
feeling a doughboy could possibly have!

Claude thought he would stroll about to look at the town a
little. It had been taken by the Germans in the autumn of 1914,
after their retreat from the Marne, and they had held it until
about a year ago, when it was retaken by the English and the
Chasseurs d'Alpins. They had been able to reduce it and to drive
the Germans out, only by battering it down with artillery; not
one building remained standing.

Ruin was ugly, and it was nothing more, Claude was thinking, as
he followed the paths that ran over piles of brick and plaster.
There was nothing picturesque about this, as there was in the war
pictures one saw at home. A cyclone or a fire might have done
just as good a job. The place was simply a great dump-heap; an
exaggeration of those which disgrace the outskirts of American
towns. It was the same thing over and over; mounds of burned
brick and broken stone, heaps of rusty, twisted iron, splintered
beams and rafters, stagnant pools, cellar holes full of muddy
water. An American soldier had stepped into one of those holes a
few nights before, and been drowned.

This had been a rich town of eighteen thousand inhabitants; now
the civilian population was about four hundred. There were people
there who had hung on all through the years of German occupation;
others who, as soon as they heard that the enemy was driven out,
came back from wherever they had found shelter. They were living
in cellars, or in little wooden barracks made from old timbers
and American goods boxes. As he walked along, Claude read
familiar names and addresses, painted on boards built into the
sides of these frail shelters: "From Emery Bird, Thayer Co.
Kansas City, Mo." "Daniels and Fisher, Denver, Colo." These
inscriptions cheered him so much that he began to feel like going
up and calling on the French ladies.

The sun had come out hot after three days of rain. The stagnant
pools and the weeds that gr