“Oh, I don't blame you. These French towns are the dullest places; though I just love France, don't you?” The “Y” man had a faintly whining voice.
“Look, we must get to know each other real well. My name's Spencer Sheffield...Spencer B. Sheffield.... And between you and me there's not a soul in the division you can talk to. It's dreadful not to have intellectual people about one. I suppose you're from New York.”
“Um hum, so am I. You're probably read some of my things in Vain Endeavor.... What, you've never read Vain Endeavor? I guess you didn't go round with the intellectual set.... Musical people often don't.... Of course I don't mean the Village. All anarchists and society women there....”
“I've never gone round with any set, and I never...”
“Never mind, we'll fix that when we all get back to New York. And now you just sit down at that piano and play me Debussy's 'Arabesque.'... I know you love it just as much as I do. But first what's your name?”
“I may be related to the Kaiser for all I know.”
“The Penneltons... that's it. You see my mother was a Miss Spencer from Spencer Falls, Virginia, and her mother was a Miss Pennelton, so you and I are cousins. Now isn't that a coincidence?”
“Distant cousins. But I must go back to the barracks.”
“Come in and see me any time,” Spencer B. Sheffield shouted after him. “You know where; back of the shack; And knock twice so I'll know it's you.”
Outside the house where he was quartered Andrews met the new top sergeant, a lean man with spectacles and a little mustache of the color and texture of a scrubbing brush.
“Here's a letter for you,” the top sergeant said. “Better look at the new K. P. list I've just posted.”
The letter was from Henslowe. Andrews read it with a smile of pleasure in the faint afternoon light, remembering Henslowe's constant drawling talk about distant places he had never been to, and the man who had eaten glass, and the day and a half in Paris.
“Andy,” the letter began, “I've got the dope at last. Courses begin in Paris February fifteenth. Apply at once to your C. O. to study somethin' at University of Paris. Any amount of lies will go. Apply all pull possible via sergeants, lieutenants and their mistresses and laundresses. Yours, Henslowe.”