When I come in from the street, very tired, after a talk with a war-widow about ways and means for taking care of her children, I find him in the living-room, the hearty, broad-faced fellow, smiling, giving me his great, farm-laborer's hand, thanking me for the last package of goodies ... as though he had not just come through the inferno of the attack at M----. "The package never arrived at a better moment," he said gaily. "We had been on awfully short rations for three days ... in a shell-hole, you know." I know that I do not know it all, but it is futile to try to draw fine distinctions with Groissard, cheeriest and simplest of "permissionnaires," always the same, always open-faced and clear-eyed, always emanating quiet confidence and always seeing it about him. If there are any tired or disheartened or apprehensive or perplexed soldiers in the army, they pass unperceived of Groissard's honest eyes. His companions are all ... to hear him talk ... as brave, as untroubled, as single-hearted as he. They never complain--that is, if Groissard's account of them is accurate: they think as little as possible about anything but food and packages from the rear and jokes. And when they do think, it is always only to be sure that everybody must hold hard and stick it out quite to the end. As long as "they" are on French soil, of course there is nothing else for an honest Frenchman to do. And they are all honest Frenchmen around Groissard. "Oh yes, madame," he says simply, balancing my little boy on his knee, "the spirit of the army is excellent. Why shouldn't it be? We're going to get them, you know. And you ought to see our regimental fireless cookers now. They're great! The cooks fill them up at the kitchen at the rear, quite out of range, you know, where there's no danger of a shell upsetting the pots, and then the men bring the big fireless cookers up on mitrailleuse carriages that can go anywhere. They worm their way clear up to us in the first-line trenches, and our ragoût is piping hot. It's like sitting down to the table at the farm at home. There's nothing so good for the spirit of an army as hot _rasta_. And your packages, the packages madame sends with the money from her American friends ... why, the days when they come it's like being a kid again, and having a birthday! And then we get two days out of five for rest at the rear, you know, except when there is a _very_ big attack going on. We're not so badly off at all!" "During those big attacks aren't you sometimes cut off from food supplies?" I ask.