Then Madame answered, and we could understand that too.

“No beds,” she said.

The pretty girl smiled in a troubled way and murmured something in a soft voice.

“She says they haven’t got any beds in the rooms.  Fritz took them all,” interpreted George. “Ecoutez, Mademoiselle.  We have beds. Trois lits.  Nous les avons.  Tous les trois.  Oui.  A la gare.  Absolument.”

Mademoiselle looked at Madame with a kink of her pretty brows.  Madame rose like a balloon to the need.

“No beds,” she said very distinctly, with a rounding of eyes and mouth.  “No beds, Messieurs.  No-o-o—­beds.”

Before George could recover John interfered.  He makes a hobby of cutting Gordian knots.

“Oh, what’s the earthly use of telling ’em we have beds when they can see for themselves that we haven’t?  They just think we can’t understand.  Let’s go up and take the rooms if they’re decent.  Then we’ll get the stretchers and put ’em up.  That’s the only sort of argument we can handle.”

Manfully George went to work again.  And reluctant, and yet obviously fascinated by his French, like a bird by a snake, Mademoiselle led up the narrow stairs and into a sizeable room, clean as a pin and as naked.  On the threshold Madame washed her hands of hope.

“Regardez! No beds. C’est affreux!”

George began again.  He had courage.  Whatever else Nature and luck denied him there was no question of that.  For a little it looked as though he were in sight of the goal.  Then Mademoiselle explained.  They were desolees, but the sales Boches had stolen all the beds, and Madame would not let the bare rooms to Messieurs les Anglais.  It would not be convenable when they had no beds.

“No beds!” Madame appealed to the skylight as witness, and we looked at each other.  It was getting late and the others would have rustled all the best bivvies by now.  John had another brain-wave.

“Let’s pantomime it.  They always understand pantomime.  There’s no use saying we’ve got beds—­not when George has to say it.  We’ll show them.”

Earnestly we pantomimed stretcher beds—­our own stretcher beds—­and reposeful slumber thereon. “Mon Dieu!” cried Mademoiselle, retreating in haste.  “No beds,” repeated Madame, unconvinced and unafraid.

“She means that she doesn’t want to have us,” said John in cold despair.

“She’d be a fool if she did now,” answered Colin grimly.  “Let’s get out of this.”

And then John had a third brain-wave.  He ordered George on guard, and descended with Colin in search of the concrete proof of our sanity.  And Madame’s voice, faint yet pursuing, followed us down.

“No beds,” it said.

In ten minutes we were back triumphant with the three stretchers.  It was a full six months since we had written to England for them, and they had come at last.  Visions of rest went upstairs with us, and under the big eyes of Madame and Mademoiselle and several more Madames who had collected as unobtrusively as a silk hat collects dust we slashed at the coverings, ripped them off and disclosed—­three deck-chairs.