I declined, but he was not offended; yet he seemed reluctant to go.

“Sit down,” I said.  “It won’t belong before some of the men will be passing by on their way to the fields, and then you won’t have made your journey for nothing.”

Pere Potipard gladly accepted, and after a generous swig at his brandy, began telling me about what happened at Villiers during the German invasion in 1870.  As he talked on, night gradually disappeared, and when the clock in the belfry tolled three A. M. my successors came to relieve me.  I blew out the lantern and walked home in broad daylight.

The boys looked very sheepish when they learned what had happened, but as I did not boast of my exploit, merely taking it as a matter of course, they had no way of approaching the subject, and like many other things of the kind, it was soon forgotten in the pursuing of our onerous daily tasks, and the moral anxiety we were experiencing.

There seemed to be no end to the fruit season that summer.  The lengthy table in the servants’ hall was literally covered with glasses containing jam and jelly of every description, awaiting their paper lids.  Nini said there were over five hundred—­to me it seemed thousands, and I was heartily glad of a lull before the hospital should open.  And I remember distinctly that the last thing I prepared was some thirty quarts of black currant brandy; that is to say, I had poured the raw alcohol on to the fruit and set the jars aside to await completion six months later!  Shortly afterwards I received word by a roundabout route from Soissons that I might expect my trained nurses and supplies at any moment.  In the meantime I was without word from H. since that eventful meeting a week before.

Saturday, the fifteenth of August, was as little like a religious fete day as one can imagine.  At an early hour the winnowing machine rumbled up the road to the square beside the chateau.  Under the circumstances each one must take his turn at getting in his wheat and oats, and there was no choice of day or hour.  Besides, the village had already been called on to furnish grain and fodder for the army, and the harvest must be measured and declared at once.  This only half concerned me, for my hay was already in the lofts before the war began, and two elderly men who had applied for work as bunchers, had been engaged for the last week in August.

After service at Charly, I walked across to the post office.  The post mistress and telegraph operator, a delightful provincial maiden lady, always welcomes me most cordially, and at present I fancied she might have some news that had not yet reached Villiers. (Mind you, since the second of August we had had but two newspapers, and those obtained with what difficulty!) The bureau now belonged to the army, and for a fortnight Mademoiselle Maupoix and her two young girl assistants had hardly had time to sleep, so busy were they transmitting ciphered dispatches, passing on orders, etc.  It was to this physical exhaustion that I attributed the swollen countenance of my little friend when she opened the door to her private sitting-room.  It was evident she had something to tell, but her exquisite breeding forbade that she go headlong into her subject, before having graciously inquired for my health, my husband and news of us both since last we met.