at I set off--for one
doesn't let his turn in the company go by, eh? So I stayed with the old
people, and waited. I like 'em well enough, but I got down in the mouth
all the same. As for them, it was enough that they could see me, and it
worried them that I was bored by their company-how else could it be? At
the end of the sixth day--at the finish of my leave, and the very
evening before returning--a young man on a bicycle, son of the Florence
family, brings me a letter from Mariette to say that her permit had not
yet come--"

"Ah, rotten luck," cried the audience.

"And that," continued Eudore, "there was only one thing to do.--I was
to get leave from the mayor of Mont-St-Eloi, who would get it from the
military, and go myself at full speed to see her at Villers."

"You should have done that the first day, not the sixth!"

"So it seems, but I was afraid we should cross and me miss her--y'see,
as soon as I landed, I was expecting her all the time, and every minute
I fancied I could see her at the open door. So I did as she told me."

"After all, you saw her?"

"Just one day--or rather, just one night."

"Quite sufficient!" merrily said Lamuse, and Eudore the pale and
serious shook his head under the shower of pointed and perilous jests
that followed.

"Shut your great mouths for five minutes, chaps."

"Get on with it, petit."

"There isn't a great lot of it," said Eudore.

"Well, then, you were saying you had got a hump with your old people?"

"Ah, yes. They had tried their best to make up for Mariette--with
lovely rashers of our own ham, and plum brandy, and patching up my
linen, and all sorts of little spoiled-kid tricks--and I noticed they
were still slanging each other in the old familiar way! But you talk
about a difference! I always had my eye on the door to see if some time
or other it wouldn't get a move on and turn into a woman. So I went and
saw the mayor, and set off, yesterday, towards two in the
afternoon--towards fourteen o'clock I might well say, seeing that I had
been counting the hours since the day before! I had just one day of my
leave left then.

"As we drew near in the dusk, through the carriage window of the little
railway that still keeps going down there on some fag-ends of line, I
recognized half the country, and the other half I didn't. Here and
there I got the sense of it, all at once, and it came back all fresh to
me, and melted away again, just as if it was talking to me. The