3

and enjoying with you the kind of music that we both find infinite
pleasure in. Once in a while! Sometime.

Yes, Dear., I do think many a Sunday –– when I know it is Sunday ––
of what might be going on, as you say, if –– if –– but ––
Except in a sort of imaginary way there is no difference between
Sunday here and any other day of the week. We have no calendars.
The only way I have of telling is by my diary notes –– which I keep
in a sort of desultory way.

If I were to tell you every time that I am interrupted in my letters,
Edna, they would –– most of them –– be simply a series of statements
of what I have been doing in the meantime. Two calls have come in,
one of which I took, to M––, over the new French road around their
part of the lake. One big nigger couché. The road is blasted out of
solid rock along the shore, and at some places the top of the ambulance
scrapes on jutting points while the wheels are within six inches of
a perpendicular drop to the water. I had to wait for the genie to
clear away the debris from dynamite explosions twice. A chauffeur
of a colonel came in demanding a spark plug for his car, which was
stalled on the road. Chit wants to know constantly how much longer
I think the rooster should be cooked, and whether onions require more
or less time than rice. Yousee, we are going to have some feed.
He purchased some sugar from a store in the village. The purchase
had to be made sort o' sub rosa, for it is defendu to sell such a
commodity. He paid ten francs for one ocre –– three pounds –– that
is, that was the price which the merchant asked for it. But he got
it for seven francs fifty, because of the merchant's inability to
figure change in French money. He is used to dealing with the Boche.
We get a small amount of sugar for the unit at the French ravetaillement
station, on a ticket that tells the number of men for which the rations
are.

In spite of the fact that most of the fellows are jubilant over the
prospects of returning to Paris and foods delectable, I am just a bit
wistful. It has been pleasant, the work, the experiences in a such
strange land have been, and it has all seemed very much worth while.
And I have been sort of anticipating the terrors of the winter here
in the mountains –– and the beauties of the country, as they must be
when the snow is deep.

I have made another run in the meantime. It has been raining, and
the streams that I had to ford were up over the running board of the car,
The hill on the way to C––, where I went, is too steep for a voiture
to climb loaded, and there are some road workers there that we get
to push us in the steepest places. And I have also had the antici–
pated chicken feed. Chicken and onions and rice with sugar –– and war
bread actually tasted good. Chit and Harry had it already for me
when I returned, and now I have sat and talked with the kids –– jes
feelin' good an' thinkin' about how good I felt. Harry is now telling
about one time when he was in Kansas City, and a bum showed him an ad.
in the paper for a gardener, an ad. in which references were required.
The bum said that he was a good gardener, but had no references, and
wanted to know what to do about it. Harry said he could fix that up
OK, went over to the writing desk –– the same desk on which I wrote you
an after midnight letter on President Wilson's war address –– and wrote
the man out a flowery recommendation, saying that the fellow had been
in his employ foo several years and his work had been entirely satis–
factory, signing his own name. We have also been talking over God–
mothers. Harry's told him that if he was lonely and wanted someone
else to write to him, she was sending her daughter's address.