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Rh she goin’ to, anyways? See, Mr. Claude, she’s got her iron cook-pot, pore old thing, carryin’ it all the way!”

Pictures of soldiers in gas-masks puzzled her; gas was something she hadn’t learned about in the Civil War, so she worked it out for herself that these masks were worn by the army cooks, to protect their eyes when they were cutting up onions! “All them onions they have to cut up, it would put their eyes out if they didn’t wear somethin’,” she argued.

On the morning of the eighth of April Claude came downstairs early and began to clean his boots, which were caked with dry mud. Mahailey was squatting down beside her stove, blowing and purring into it. The fire was always slow to start in heavy weather. Claude got an old knife and a brush, and putting his foot on a chair over by the west window, began to scrape his shoe. He had said good-morning to Mahailey, nothing more. He hadn’t slept well, and was pale.

“Mr. Claude,” Mahailey grumbled, “this stove ain’t never drawed good like my old one Mr. Ralph took away from me. I can’t do nothin’ with it. Maybe you’ll clean it out for me next Sunday.”

“I’ll clean it today, if you say so. I won’t be here next Sunday. I’m going away.”

Something in his tone made Mahailey get up, her eyes still blinking with the smoke, and look at him sharply. “You ain’t goin’ off there where Miss Enid is?” she asked anxiously.

“No, Mahailey.” He had dropped the shoebrush and stood with one foot on the chair, his elbow on his knee, looking out of the window as if he had forgotten himself. “No, I’m not going to China. I’m going over to help fight the Germans.”

He was still staring out at the wet fields. Before he could