Andrews looked down suddenly and saw in front of him the man who had signalled to him in the regimental sergeant-major's office.
“No, not that I know of,” stammered Andrews puzzled.
“Harvard.... Guess we haven't got a chapter there.... I'm from North Western. Anyway you want to go to school in France here if you can. So do I.”
“Don't you want to come and have a drink?”
The man frowned, pulled his overseas cap down over his forehead, where the hair grew very low, and looked about him mysteriously. “Yes,” he said.
They splashed together down the muddy village street. “We've got thirteen minutes before tattoo.... My name's Walters, what's yours?” He spoke in a low voice in short staccato phrases.
“Andrews, you've got to keep this dark. If everybody finds out about it we're through. It's a shame you're not a Kappa Mu, but college men have got to stick together, that's the way I look at it.”
“Oh, I'll keep it dark enough,” said Andrews.
“It's too good to be true. The general order isn't out yet, but I've seen a preliminary circular. What school d'you want to go to?”
“That's the stuff. D'you know the back room at Baboon's?”
Walters turned suddenly to the left up an alley, and broke through a hole in a hawthorn hedge.
“A guy's got to keep his eyes and ears open if he wants to get anywhere in this army,” he said.
As they ducked in the back door of a cottage, Andrews caught a glimpse of the billowy line of a tile roof against the lighter darkness of the sky. They sat down on a bench built into a chimney where a few sticks made a splutter of flames.
“Monsieur desire?” A red-faced girl with a baby in her arms came up to them.
“That's Babette; Baboon I call her,” said Walters with a laugh.
“That'll suit me all right. It's my treat, remember.”
“I'm not forgetting it. Now let's get to business. What you do is this. You write an application. I'll make that out for you on the typewriter tomorrow and you meet me here at eight tomorrow night and I'll give it to you.... You sign it at once and hand it in to your sergeant. See?”
“This'll just be a preliminary application; when the order's out you'll have to make another.”
The woman, this time without the baby, appeared out of the darkness of the room with a candle and two cracked bowls from which steam rose, faint primrose-color in the candle light. Walters drank his bowl down at a gulp, grunted and went on talking.