* * * * *

OUR BIVVIE.

“Not a bad possie,” said George, looking round the village.  “Let’s rustle a bivvie before the crowd comes along.”

All George’s performances in the art of rustling bivvies rank as star.  He permits no coarse and obvious gathering of an expectant horde about the opening door; no slacking of straps and bootlaces until the final “I will” is said on either side.  He debouches in extended order on the doomed house; gets his range and has the barrage well in hand (the quantity and quality of Madame’s gesticulations furnish the key to this) before Colin drifts off the horizon and shows a peaked face with haunting eyes over George’s shoulder.  Colin does not speak.  That is not his metier.  He is the star shell illuminating the position; and usually in about six minutes’ time it is safe for John to put in an appearance with the kit.

This is the recognised procedure, and it has served us indifferently well up and down three years of war and a good deal of France and Flanders.  Therefore John was not to blame when, after waiting the scheduled six minutes, he arrived to find the other two still in the thick of it.  Either Colin was not haunting up to form (which was likely, as he had been over-fed lately) or George’s French (which was never made in the place where they make marriages) had scandalised Madame.

She stood in the door like some historical personage, probably the Sphinx, and repeated a guttural kind of incantation while George stretched his ears until they stood out more than usual in a struggle to understand.

“Rotten patois some of these people speak,” he said.  “I believe she has a room, though something’s biting her.  Likely enough Fritz went off with all her furniture; but I’ve already explained twenty times that that doesn’t matter. Ecoutez, Madame. We only want a room. Chambre-a-coucher. We can furnish it.  We have three beds. Trois lits. Trois stretcher-beds sent over from Angleterre. A la gare. We’ve just seen them. Trois lits nous avons. Three beds.”

“Beds!” Madame pounced on the word. “C’est cela! No beds, Monsieur. Je n’en ai pas.”

“Ah, now we know where we are.”  George looked round triumphantly. “Ecoutez, Madame. We don’t want beds. Nous les desirons jamais. We have them. Trois lits. We don’t want them.  We have beds. Comprenez?”

“No beds,” explained Madame firmly.

“But I’ve just told you—­” George plunged again into the maelstrom, and a pretty girl appeared from the firelit room behind to stir him to his highest flights of eloquence.  A smell of savoury cooking came also, and out in the street night shut down dark and chill and sinister, as it does in all the best novels.  John let part of the kit down on the door-sill.  It was his way of explaining that at the present moment there was a deeper, more intimate call than the Call of the Wild.  Colin moved up a step and turned the haunting-stop full on.  George redoubled his efforts, making them very clear indeed.  We could understand almost every word he said.