hatted with big
Barque, who leaned towards him from a little way off.

"I wasn't as mucky as this when I was a civvy," he said.

"Well, my poor friend, it's a dirty change for the worse," said Barque.

"Lucky for you," says Tirette, going one better; "when it comes to
kids, you'll present madame with some little niggers!"

Blaire took offense, and gathering gloom wrinkled his brow. "What have
you got to give me lip about, you? What next? It's war-time. As for
you, bean-face, you think perhaps the war hasn't changed your phizog
and your manners? Look at yourself, monkey-snout, buttock-skin! A man
must be a beast to talk as you do." He passed his hand over the dark
deposit on his face, which the rains of those days had proved finally
indelible, and added, "Besides, if I am as I am, it's my own choosing.
To begin with, I have no teeth. The major said to me a long time ago,
'You haven't a single tooth. It's not enough. At your next rest,' he
says, 'take a turn round to the estomalogical ambulance.'"

"The tomatological ambulance," corrected Barque.

"Stomatological," Bertrand amended.

"You have all the making of an army cook--you ought to have been one,"
said Barque.

"My idea, too," retorted Blaire innocently. Some one laughed. The black
man got up at the insult. "You give me belly-ache," he said with scorn.
"I'm off to the latrines."

When his doubly dark silhouette had vanished, the others scrutinized
once more the great truth that down here in the earth the cooks are the
dirtiest of men.

"If you see a chap with his skin and toggery so smeared and stained
that you wouldn't touch him with a barge-pole, you can say to yourself,
'Probably he's a cook.' And the dirtier he is, the more likely to be a
cook."

"It's true, and true again," said Marthereau.

"Tiens, there's Tirloir! Hey, Tirloir!"

He comes up busily, peering this way and that, on an eager scent. His
insignificant head, pale as chlorine, hops centrally about in the
cushioning collar of a greatcoat that is much too heavy and big for
him. His chin is pointed, and his upper teeth protrude. A wrinkle round
his mouth is so deep with dirt that it looks like a muzzle. As usual,
he is angry, and as usual, he rages aloud.

"Some one cut my pouch in two last night!"

"It was the relief of the 129th. Where had you put it?"

He indicates a bayonet stuck in the wall of the trench close to the
mouth of a funk-hole--"There, hanging on the toothpick there."