July 29 to Mother.

He’s waiting for “a big States mail” that is rumored; otherwise, he “was horribly busy all week.” He reports on the Saturday lunch “at the house of the Frenchman I mentioned in my last letter.”

This was quite an affair with souvenirs for each guest, a crowd of twelve people at table and many courses of most excellently cooked food. The conversation was practically all in French but am not so bashful now about trying to talk French in such a crowd. I still make plenty of mistakes but they seem to understand me quite well which is the main thing.

Meanwhile, the invitations seem to pile up. There is the “American lady” across the street who “had seen us going in and out and finally called us up one night and asked us to come over.” Seems she has lived in France for eighteen years and is a “woman of considerable wealth, and has been doing nursing work.” She also has a country estate “and we are all invited out for Sunday some time soon.”

He turns to news of the day. “Everyone here continues in good humor over the results of our Counter offensive. It surely seems to have caught the Bosche napping.” He then promises to write more once “I have some home letters to answer.”