Like that each one of the women makes you think of a beautiful, wonderful thing.
The patronne was standing by the bed of little 10.
I said, "It does not go well, little 10?"
He said, "Not too well, madame." His poor face was twitching, and his poor hands on the sheet.
The patronne said to me, "He has given us a bad night, that sort of a horror there." She stood with her hands purple on her broad hips and looked at him, and said, "Espèce d'horreur, veux-tu finir de nous en m----"
It is dreadful, but I can bear it better like that. The little good sisters of other, different hospitals, the ladies of the Red Cross, the calm and tenderness and prayers, how strange it would seem.
"Oh, you laugh!" said the patronne, "and all the trouble you make us! Wait till you are well!" She said, "Attends que tu sois guéri, et je te f----trai un coup sur le citron."
Madame Marthe came with the hypodermic syringe and tubes and glasses in a basin. Her hands were trembling. I love her when her hands tremble.
The patronne said to me, "He is off for another little party of billiards."
"Name of God," said the patronne, "of course he'll be better to-morrow."
Next day, when I tried not to cry because his bed was empty, she said to me, "It was no lie: he is better, isn't he?"
What made me dreadfully want to cry was that they all, every one of them, wished me good health--little Louis, who is dying, and all the rest of them.
The Apache Baby--Wednesday, January 5th--Cantine
They telephoned from the cantine that the baby of the girl Alice was dead at the hospital, and that the funeral was to be from there that afternoon at three o'clock, and that Alice wanted me to come.
Mademoiselle Renée, the économe, who telephoned, said it was the apache girl with the ear-rings.
I don't know why she wanted me to come to the funeral of her baby. Of the nearly three hundred women who came twice every day to the cantine, she had never been especially my friend. Her baby had been a sick little thing, and I had been touched by her wild love of it. It had no father, she told me. We never ask questions at the cantine, but she had been pleased to tell me that. She had said she was glad, because, so, it was all her own. She had rocked it as she held it wrapped in the folds of her red shawl, and shaken her long bright ear-rings, laughing down at it, over her bowl of soup. And now it is dead.