well that
you would be mine--_tres franchement, tres loyalement_.' She
put out her hand and we shook it. And old Mo said, 'Miss, I'd go
to hell for you!' Whereupon the little red spot you may have
seen for yourself, came into her pale cheek, and a soft look
like a flitting moonbeam crept into her eyes. Laddie, if I'm
waxing too poetical, just consider that Mademoiselle Jeanne
Bossiere is not the ordinary woman the British private soldier
is in the habit of consorting with. Then she took up her glass.
'_Je vais porter un toast--Vive l'Angleterre!_' And although a
Scotsman, I drank it as if it applied to me. And then she cried,
'_Vive la France!_' And old Toinette cried, '_Vive la France!_'

"And they looked transfigured, and I fairly itched to sing the
Marseillaise, though I knew I couldn't. Then she chinked glasses
with us.

"'_Bonne chance, mes amis!_'

"And then she made a sign to the auld wife, who added the few
remaining drops to our glasses. 'To Doggie!' said mademoiselle.
We drank the toast, laddie. Old Mo began in his cracked voice,
'For he's a jolly good fellow.' I kicked him and told him to
shut up. But mademoiselle said:

"'I've heard of that. It is a ceremony. I like it. Continue.'

"So Mo and I held up our glasses and, in indifferent song,
proclaimed you what the Army, developing certain rudimentary
germs, has made you, and mademoiselle too held up her glass and
threw back her head and joined us in the hip, hip, hoorays. It
would have done your heart good, laddie, to have been there to
see. But we did you proud.

"When we emerged from the festival, the prettiest which, in the
course of a variegated career, I have ever attended, Mo says:

"'If I hadn't a gel at home----'

"'If you hadn't got a girl at home,' said I, 'you'd be the next
damnedest fool in the army to Phineas McPhail!'

"We marched out just before dusk, and there she was by the front
door; and though she stood proud and upright, and smiled with
her lips and blew us kisses with both hands, to which the boys
all responded with a cheer, there were tears streaming down her
cheeks--and the tears, laddie, were not for Mo, or me, or any
one of us ugly beggars that passed her by.

"I also have good news for you, in that I hear from the
thunderous, though excellent, Sergeant Ballingha