ieur."

"Give me some of the best quality."

"How much does monsieur desire?"

"A lot," said Doggie.

And he bought a great package, enough to set the whole village
sneezing to the end of the war, and peering round the tiny shop and
espying in the recesses of a glass case a little olive-wood box
ornamented on the top with pansies and forget-me-nots, purchased that
also. He had just paid when his companions put their heads in the
doorway. Mo, pointing waggishly to Doggie, warned the little girl
against his depravity.

"Mauvy, mauvy!" said he.

"_Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?_" asked the child.

"He's the idiot of the regiment, whom I have to look after and feed
with pap," said Doggie, "and, being hungry, he is begging you not to
detain me."

"_Mon Dieu!_" cried the child.

Doggie, always courteous, went out with a "_Bon soir, mademoiselle_,"
and joined his friends.

"What were you jabbering to her about?" Mo asked suspiciously.

Doggie gave him the literal translation of his speech. Phineas burst
into loud laughter.

"Laddie," said he, "I've never heard you make a joke before. The idiot
of the regiment, and you're his keeper! Man, that's fine. What has
come over you to-day?"

"If he'd said a thing like that in Mare Street, Hackney, I'd have
knocked his blinking 'ead orf," declared Mo Shendish.

Doggie stopped and put his parcel-filled hands behind his back.

"Have a try now, Mo."

But Mo bade him fry his ugly face, and thus established harmony.

It was late that evening before Doggie could find an opportunity of
slipping, unobserved, through the open door into the house kitchen
dimly illuminated by an oil lamp.

"Madame," said he to Toinette, "I observed to-day that you had come to
the end of your snuff. Will you permit a little English soldier to
give you some? Also a little box to keep it in."

The old woman, spare, myriad-wrinkled beneath her peasant's _coiffe_,
yet looking as if carved out of weather-beaten oak, glanced from the
gift to the donor and from the donor to the gift.

"But, monsieur--monsieur--why?" she began quaveringly.

"You surely have some one--_la bas_--over yonder?" said Doggie with
a sweep of his hand.

"_Mais oui?_ How did you know? My grandson. _Mon petiot_----"

"It is he, my comrade, who sends the snuff to the _grand'mere_." And
Doggie bolted.

CHAPTER XIII

At breakfast next morning Doggie searched the courtyard in vain for
the slim figure of the girl. Yesterd