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Buttons Stephen Morehouse Avery
Speaking strategically, the village of Angres is not worth the powder, and it is doubtless for this reason that it is able to smirk impudently up at the bright French sun when all of the surrounding towns have been bombarded to bits. Angres doesn't nestle beautifully in any hills. It peeks right up out of a mildly rolling country as though its immunity was the result of divine protection rather than the incidence of its board of trade. It has proved the importance of being unimportant.
Mme. Moignnea was entirely unappreciative of the town's good fortune, She declared that she preferred bullets to billets, and that an occasional shell was n'importe compared to the devastation of those British appetites. The madame had a big and comfortable house--she was the general's wife, you know--so it was but natural that her third floor should be a barracks, her second floor a quarters de luxe for those unscrupulous sublieutenants, and her downstairs une grande dining-room.
"Eat is what they do, those Tommee Atkeens. They eat and flirt with that Emilie of mine, m'sieu, until I am veree wild." It was too much for madame.
That Emilie of hers was enough to make any one "veree wild." Of course her talents in this direction were utilized more upon men than mothers, but as to the "wild" part of it, there can be no doubt The men were made wilder than madame. It was said that Emilie's pretty face had kept the blaze from the great house when the Huns swept through on their way to the gates of Paris. In fact, all through the weary months of Schrecklichheit in Angres, Emilie had devoted most of her time to singing to and flirting with the officer Fritzies.
It had been worth wh