Bill’s acquaintance with Rebecca is entirely on business lines he wants me to understand. She does his laundry for him. “It’s all very well,” I say, “to take her your washing, but why must you take her chocolates?” He knows I disapprove. When he lingers too long on the water detail I eye him severely on his return. “Bill, have you been hobnobbing with Rebecca?” Bill grins admission. Rebecca lives in a white little one story door-and-window house just around the corner on the Rue d’Eglise which I must pass going to my canteen. And Rebecca keeps tab on the precise hour and minute at which I return to my billet under Bill’s escort every night. Going home one stormy night I took Bill’s arm. The next day Bill informed me that Rebecca had advised him that such conduct, according to French notions, was not quite _comme il faut_. Bill, I find, is able to make an astonishing amount of conversation with his “nigger French” that takes absolutely no account of moods, tenses, conjugations, declinations or any of the other stuff in grammar books. And I am afraid he understands a great deal that it would be just as well he didn’t. “How did you learn it all?” I asked him. He looked at me side-wise. “Rebecca gave me lessons,” he answered grinning. Last night, as we passed Rebecca’s house, I noticed that her door was the least bit ajar. As Bill left me at my gate I admonished him; “Now don’t you stop to say good-night to Rebecca.” “Gosh, no!” said Bill, “if I did I’m afraid I might have to hurry or I’d be late for breakfast.” Whenever I meet Rebecca on the street she always bows to me most urbanely. Nor is Rebecca all my concern in relation to Big Bill. There is also the pretty girl who lives down the street who undoubtedly would not be averse to accompanying him to America. Bill stops at her house every night in order to get a quart of fresh milk for the C. O.’s breakfast. I bid him be wary of these Franco-American alliances, citing horrible examples I have known, such as the machine-gunner, for instance, who, in order to be in harmony with his future family-in-law, felt it incumbent on him to appear at his wedding wearing a pair of wooden shoes; and of the doughboy who married a widow with two children, and, since he knew no French and she no English, persuaded his company commander to detail an interpreter to live in the house with them for the first three days after their marriage. Not many days ago a girl came to my kitchen door in company with a soldier. She had a United States paymaster’s cheque which she wished to have cashed. Afterwards I questioned Bill. It seems a lieutenant had married and afterwards divorced her. She was still drawing his allotment. She looked so thoroughly the peasant, bare-headed, in a shawl and shoddy skirt, with nothing to particularly distinguish her pretty but inexpressive face, that I voiced my wonder to the boys. “Oh but you ought to see her when she gets dressed up!” they said.