It was the delight of spending, rather than
the joy of possessing, which made them go from one shop to another in
search of things they could carry hack to the line--that and the lure
of girls behind the counters, laughing, bright-eyed girls who
understood their execrable French, even English spoken with a Glasgow
accent, and were pleased to flirt for five minutes with any group of
young fighting-men--who broke into roars of laughter at the gallantry
of some Don Juan among them with the gift of audacity, and paid
outrageous prices for the privilege of stammering out some foolish
sentiment in broken French, blushing to the roots of their hair
(though captains and heroes) at their own temerity with a girl who, in
another five minutes, would play the same part in the same scene with
a different group of boys.
I used to marvel at the patience of these girls. How bored they must
have been with all this flirtation, which led to nothing except,
perhaps, the purchase of a bit of soap at twice its proper price! They
knew that these boys would leave to go back to the trenches in a few
hours and that some of them would certainly be dead in a few days.
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