The girls went away looking at their silhouettes and laughing. They were nice-looking girls. One of them worked in the wine shop across from the hospital.
“All right,” I said.
“Take your cap off.”
“No. With it on.”
“It will not be so beautiful,” the old man said. “But,” he brightened, “it will be more military.”
He snipped away at the black paper, then separated the two thicknesses and pasted the profiles on a card and handed them to me.
“How much?”
“That’s all right.” He waved his hand. “I just made them for you.”
“Please.” I brought out some coppers. “For pleasure.”
“No. I did them for a pleasure. Give them to your girl.”
“Many thanks until we meet.”
“Until I see thee.”
I went on to the hospital. There were some letters, an official one, and some others. I was to have three weeks’convalescent leave and then return to the front. I read it over carefully. Well, that was that. The convalescent leave started October fourth when my course was finished. Three weeks was twenty-one days. That made October twenty-fifth. I told them I would not be in and went to the restaurant a little way up the street from the hospital for supper and read my letters and the Corriere Della Sera at the table. There was a letter from my grandfather, containing family news, patriotic encouragement, a draft for two hundred dollars, and a few clippings; a dull letter from the priest at our mess, a letter from a man I knew who was flying with the French and had gotten in with a wild gang and was telling
