He is of Morocco, brown and very lonely, and always shivering with cold. He speaks scarcely any French. His great dark eyes look to one with all the sadness of the eyes of animals that are dumb. Nobody understands him. He smiles up at us, with his beautiful white teeth and his big dumb eyes, and does not understand what we are saying. He makes me little magic-lanterns out of orange rinds, and tells me long stories about them, of which I understand not a word.
Once when I went back, just for an afternoon's visit to the hospital, I was wearing a bright blue silk scarf, and he took it and held it and cried over it, and would not give it back to me. I cannot imagine of what it reminded him, why he cried, or why he loved it.
He has three tiny little wooden dolls, scarcely bigger than almonds and wonderfully carved, that he never will let us touch. Madame Marthe thinks that they are strange gods of his; but I think they represent three children, far away, in lands where skies are blue, like my scarf.
He is only slightly wounded; very soon he will have to unwrap himself from my big white woollen shawl, and go away again to battles.
And I suppose I shall never know anything more about him.
He was standing half turned away from the others, the fat old woman in the woollen knitted shawl and a girl with a pretty brown bare head. He was holding a big market basket very carefully in both hands. I thought there was something odd about the careful way he held it and the way he stood, his head turned to one side and hanging a bit.
The old woman and the girl were talking very much about the cabbages, with the woman of the push-cart, also old and also wearing a knitted woollen shawl.
In the stir and noise of the street market the way the tall broad young soldier stood so still and silent did seem odd. And he was holding the basket with such very great care.
There was a live white goose in the basket. It kept stretching its long neck up over the rim of the basket and peering about, opening and shutting its yellow bill and hissing at people.
When the old woman and the girl had finished their discussion and selected their cabbage, they pushed the cabbage into the market basket along with the goose, and all the time the soldier held the basket carefully.