For two days I was a sort
of helper in the kitchen of one of the centers of the C.O.A., 'cos
they couldn't let me do nothing while waiting for my reply, which
didn't hurry, seeing they'd sent another inquiry and a super-inquiry
after it, and the reply had too many halts to make in each office,
going and coming.
"In short, I was cook in the shop. Once I waited at table, seeing
that the head cook had just got back from leave for the fourth time
and was tired. I saw and I heard those people every time I went into
the dining-room, that was in the Prefecture, and all that hot and
illuminated row got into my head. They were only auxiliaries in
there, but there were plenty of the armed service among the number,
too. They were almost all old men, with a few young ones besides,
sitting here and there.
"I'd begun to get about enough of it when one of the broomsticks
said, 'The shutters must be closed; it's more prudent.' My boy. they
were a lump of a hundred and twenty-five miles from the firing-line,
but that pock-marked puppy he wanted to make believe there was
danger of bombardment by aircraft--"
"And there's my cousin," said Tulacque, fumbling, "who wrote to
me--Look, here's what he says: 'Mon cher Adolphe, here I am
definitely settled in Paris as attache to Guard-Room 60.
While you are down there. I must stay in the capital at the mercy of
a Taube or a Zeppelin!'"
The phrase sheds a tranquil delight abroad, and we assimilate it
like a tit-bit, laughing.
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