Then a train arrived, the great room was flooded again, and no time for anything except to ask, “_Avez-vous votre quart?_” (the tin cup) our bowls having given out during the rush; or, “_Prenez votre billet à la caisse_,” or, in order to relieve the congestion at _la caisse_, one takes their ten centimes and pours and pours and pours, or indicates the end of the counter, where the _repas complet_, consisting of soup, meat, vegetable, and salad, is served. _Boudin_ with potatoes (a hundred yards of this dark “blood-sausage,” curled up in boxes before being cooked, is an awful sight), or hash with potatoes, they love, but one and all hate macaroni with a deep hatred. Sometimes it is served when the potatoes give out, and they don’t conceal their distaste. They get too much cold macaroni in the trenches. It’s always the ones who speak English who have the worst manners. One rather nice-looking individual came up to the _repas complet_ counter, saying: “I’m in a ’urry. Got no waiters? Step live.’” No _un_corrupted Frenchman, even half-seas over, would dream of such a form of address! Lots of tiny, yellow Annamites in to-day, sounding just the way they look and looking just the way they sound. One brought back his salad-plate (accidents will happen in the best canteens) with a little worm a-move upon its edge, and he made some unintelligible sounds. When I thoughtlessly asked a _poilu_ what he was saying, the _poilu_, quite unembarrassed, proceeded to tell me, but _I_ can’t tell _you_! It must go no further. Lunched at the house by the Marne, where we talk American politics for a change, then back. One goes, one returns, and still they flood the vast room, and one continues the book of the _cantine_, bound in its horizon blue, with its blood-stained, tear-sealed pages. A quite peculiar warming of the heart when one’s own khaki-clad men come in. Early in the afternoon an American appeared at the counter, accompanied by a French corporal. He had completely forgotten the name of his town, was driving a _camion_, and said, with a distressed air, “If I could only find a certain spot in town, I _could_ get back”; and then added, with a grin, “I suppose you think I’m like the doctor that could cure fits; but I’ve got to get the fits before I can do anything else, and I’m late already,” he finished, anxiously. After giving various descriptions of various localities I hit on the Place de la République, “with a fountain with three women?” and as I explained to the under-officer, he said, “You’ve saved little Willie’s life,” and hurried out. The names seem the difficult part. One of them, when I asked where he was billeted, said: “That’s one on me; it’s got three names; but”—and he beckoned to a _poilu_ standing near—“this is a pal of mine. When I give him three knocks on the shoulder he gives the name.”