Disorder? Hurry up with the
Mulligan, Mother Gervaise--we've got to gobble and go."

He slipped into the seat next to Ruth, smiling at her. He was just a
hungry, slangy boy. But those others----

Ruth could scarcely force the food down; but she determined to make a
meal for her body's sake. She did not know what was before her--how
much work, or how hard it would be, before she obtained another meal.
She managed to ask:

"Is the car all right again, Charlie?"

"You can't bust it!" he declared enthusiastically. "The Britishers
make all manner of fun of 'em. Call 'em 'mechanical fleas' and all
that. But with a hammer, a monkey-wrench, and some bale-wire, a fellow
can perform major and minor operations on a fliver in the middle of a
garageless wilderness and come through all right when better cars are
left for the junk department to gather up and salvage."

The other two ambulance drivers to whom Ruth had been introduced came
to the table and finished their suppers, Mother Gervaise grumblingly
dishing up more hot stew for them.

"It is for you and such as you I slave and slave," she said. "And what
thanks do I get?"

"For _la zozotte_ do you work, Mother," said one, laughing. "And who
would want better thanks than money?"

But Ruth kissed the woman when she rose to depart. She believed Mother
Gervaise was "tender under her rough skin," as is the saying.

The young officers had not come to the table while Ruth remained; nor
did Charlie pay much attention to them. At least, he did not try to
introduce them, and Ruth was glad of that.

There was something wrong. There was a mystery. Why should Tom
Cameron's own associates act so oddly when his name was mentioned?

She merely bowed to the officers, but shook hands with Charlie's
brother _ambulanciers_. There seemed to her something very wholesome
and fine about these youths who drove the ambulances. They had--most
of them--come to France and enlisted in their present employment before
the United States got into the war at all.

She suspected that many of them were of that class known about their
home neighborhoods as "that boy of Jones'," or "that Jackson kid." In
other words, their overflow of animal spirits, or ambition, or whatever
it was, had probably made them something of a trial to their neighbors,
if not to their families.

Ruth began to see them in a sort of golden glow of heroism. They were
the truer heroes because they denied this de