Tatterdemalion | Page 3

perhaps a large peasant's umbrella to cover them both, for the winter was hard and snowy and carriages cost money, which must now be kept entirely for the almost daily replenishment of the bag and other calls of war. The girl, to her chagrin, was always left in a safe place, for it would never do to take her in and put fancies into her head, and perhaps excite the dear soldiers with a view of anything so taking. And when the visit was over they would set forth home, walking very slowly in the high, narrow streets, Augustine pouting a little and shooting swift glances at anything in uniform, and Madame making firm her lips against a fatigue which sometimes almost overcame her before she could get home and up the stairs. And the parrot would greet them indiscreetly with new phrases " Keep smiling! " and " Kiss Augustine! " which he sometimes varied with "Kiss a poll, Poll! " or " Scratch Augustine!" to Madame' s regret. Tea would revive her somewhat, and then she would knit, for as time went on and the war seemed to get farther and farther from that end which, in common with so many, she had expected before now, it seemed dreadful not to be always doing something to help the poor dear soldiers; and for dinner, to Augustine's horror, she now had nothing but a little soup, or an egg beaten up with milk and brandy. It saved such a lot of time and expense she was sure people ate too much; and afterward she would read the Daily Mail, often putting it down to sigh, and press her lips together, and think, " One must look on the bright side of things," and wonder a little where it was. And Augustine, finishing her work in the tiny kitchen, would sigh too, and think of red trousers and peaked caps, not yet out of date in that southern region, and of her own heart saying " Kiss Augustine! '" and she would peer out between the shutters at the stars sparkling over the Camargue, or look down where the ground fell away beyond an old, old wall, and nobody walked in the winter night; and muse on her nineteenth birthday coming, and sigh with the thought that she would be old before any one had loved her; and of how Madame was looking " tres fatiguee."
Indeed, Madame was not merely looking "tres fatiguee " in these days. The world's vitality and her own were at sad January ebb. But to think of oneself was quite impossible, of course; it would be all right presently, and one must not fuss, or mention in one's letters to the dear children that one felt at all poorly. As for a doctor that would be sinful waste, and besides, what use were they except to tell you what you knew? And she was terribly vexed when Augustine found her in a faint one morning, and she found Augustine in tears, with her hair all over her face. She rated the girl soundly but feebly for making such a fuss over " a little thing like that," and with extremely trembling fingers pushed the brown hair back and told her to wash her face, while the parrot said reflectively, " Scratch a poll Hullo!" The girl, who had seen her own grandmother die not long before, and remembered how "fatiguee " she had been during her last days, was really frightened. Coming back after she had washed her face, she found her mistress writing on a number of little envelopes the same words: " En bonne Amitie." She looked up at the girl standing so ominously idle, and said:
"Take this hundred-franc note, Augustine, and go and get it changed into single francs the ironmonger will do it if you say it's for me. I am going to take a rest. I shan't buy anything for the bag for a whole week. I shall just take francs instead."
"Oh, Madame! You must not go out: vous etes trop fatiguee."
"Nonsense! How do you suppose our dear little Queen in England would get on with all she has to do, if she were to give in like that? We must none of us give up in these days. Help me to put on my things; I am going to church, and then I shall take a long rest before we go to the hospital."
"Oh, Madame! Must you go to church? It is not your kind of church. You do not pray there, do you?"
"Of course I pray there. I am very fond of the dear old church. God is in every church, Augustine; you ought to know that at your age."
"But Madame has her own religion?"
"Now, don't be silly.