the eve of my return to the Front. A strange waiter showed me to my
place, and Joseph was nowhere to be seen. Indeed a wholly different air
seemed to pervade the place since my last visit. Presently I beckoned to
a waiter whom I recognised as having served under the old _régime_.
"Where is Monsieur Joseph?" I asked him.

"Where indeed, Sir!" the man replied. "It is all so strange. One day it
is arranged that he shall take over the restaurant and its staff, and on
the next he come to say 'Good-bye' to us all, and then leave for France.
Oh, it is _drôle_. So good a business man to lose the chance that comes
once only in a life! He is too old to fight. Yet who knows? Maybe he
heard of something better out there...."

As the man spoke the gold-and-white walls of the restaurant faded, the
clatter of plates and dishes died away, and I was back again in a tiny
village shop in Picardy. Across the counter, packed with its curious
stock, I saw Monsieur Joseph, with shirt-sleeves rolled up, gravely
handing a stick of chocolate to a child, and taking its sou in return.
In the diminutive kitchen behind sat a little white-haired old lady with
such a look of content on her face as I have rarely seen.

Then suddenly I found myself back again in the London restaurant.

"Yes," I said to the waiter, "it is possible, as you say, that Monsieur
Joseph heard of something better in France."

And raising my glass I drank a silent toast.

* * * * *