So if you could have seen the road, just outside of Couilly, Thursday morning, just after nine, you would have seen a Southern girl sitting in a high cart facing east, and an elderly lady in a donkey cart facing west, and the two of them watching the road ahead for the coming of a bicycle pedalled by a gendarme with a gun on his back, as they talked like magpies.  It was all so funny that I was convulsed with laughter.  There we were, two innocent, harmless American women, talking of our family affairs and our gardens, our fuel, our health, and behaving like a pair of conspirators.  We didn’t dare to get out to embrace each other, for fear—­in case we saw a challenge coming—­ that I could not scramble back and get away quickly enough, and we only stayed a quarter of an hour.  We might just as well have carried our lunch and spent the day so far as I could see—­only if anyone had passed and had asked for our papers there would have been trouble.  However, we had our laugh, and decided that it was not worth while to risk it again.  But I could not help asking myself how, with all their red tape, they ever caught any real suspect.

Do you remember that I told you some time ago about Louise’s brother, Joseph, in the heavy artillery, who had never seen a Boche?  Well, he is at home again for his eight days.  He came to see me yesterday.  I said to him:  “Well, Joseph, where did you come from this time?”

“From the same place—­the mountains in Alsace.  We’ve not budged for nearly two years.”

“How long are you going to stay there?”

“To the end of the war, I imagine.”

“But why?” I asked.

“What can we do, madame?” he replied.  “There we are, on the top of a mountain.  We can’t get down.  The Germans can’t get up.  They are across the valley on the top of a hill in the same fix.”

“But what do you do up there?” I demanded.

“Well,” he replied, “we watch the Germans, or at least the aeroplanes do—­we can’t see them.  They work on their defenses.  They pull up new guns and shift their emplacements.  We let them work.  Then our big guns destroy their work.”

“But what do they do, Joseph?”

“Well, they fire a few shots, and go to work again.  But I’ll tell you something, madame, as sure as that we are both living, they would not do a thing if we would only leave them in peace,—­but we don’t.”

“Well, Joseph,” I asked, “have you seen a Boche yet?”

“Oh, yes, madame, I’ve seen them.  I see them, with a glass, working in the fields, ploughing, and getting ready to plant them.”

“And you don’t do anything to prevent them?”

“Well, no.  We can’t very well.  They always have a group of women and children with every gang of workmen.  They know, only too well, that French guns will not fire at that kind of target.  It is just the same with their commissary trains—­always women at the head, in the middle, and in the rear.”