Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/159

 that age. He had a brother eighteen, who wasn't to join the army for three months yet.

We aren't nearly so busy as we would like to be. Three days of the week we loaf around Ste. Menehould and then we are on duty for the next twenty-four hours at one of the posts. At times we work on our cars or hammer out souvenirs from Boche bullets and pieces of shell. A few of us are fond of quoits and play every day on a little island in the Aisne, across from our quarters. In the afternoon we drop around to the Patisserie near the Hôtel de Ville, if we have any money, and get Marie, the attractive little waitress there, to bring us a tray of cream tarts and lemonade---occasionally we experiment on something stronger. But on Tuesdays and Wednesdays it is closed, as are all the Patisseries and candy shops in France; we cannot even buy milk chocolate at an Epicerie, so we have to be content with our regular fare.

The other evening, Bradley who comes from Berkley, California, and Tenney, the only fellow in the section who has a smaller moustache than my own, set out with me for a stroll in the moonlight when it was really time to be in bed. We talked of the war, of section life and many other things; and when an hour had passed we were still going on. We reached the summit of a high hill overlooking Ste. Menehould some three miles away, and sat