The boys cheered perceptibly.  Here was at last some one who spoke a Christian tongue.

“Must have taken the wrong turning, miss,” said one of them, saluting.

“Where do you want to go?” she asked.  “You are very close to the Belgian Front here.  It is not at all safe.”

They all saluted; then, staring at her curiously, told her.

“Dear me!” said Sara Lee.  “You are a long way off.  And a long way from home too.”

They smiled.  They looked, with their clean-shaven faces, absurdly young after the bearded Belgian soldiers.

“I am an American, too,” said Sara Lee with just a touch of homesickness in her voice.  She had been feeling lonely lately.  “If you have time to come in I could give you luncheon.  Rene can tell us if any German air machines come over.”

Would they come in?  Indeed, yes!  They crawled down off the lorry, and took off their caps, and ate every particle of food in the house.  And, though they were mutely curious at first, soon they were asking questions.  How long had she been there?  What did she do?  Wasn’t it dangerous?

“Not so dangerous as it looks,” said Sara Lee, smiling.  “The Germans seldom bother the town now.  It is not worth while.”

Later on they went over the house.  They climbed the broken staircase and stared toward the break in the poplar trees, from the roofless floor above.

“Some girl!” one of them said in an undertone.

The others were gazing intently toward the Front.  Never before had they been so close.  Never had they seen a ruined town.  War, until now, had been a thing of Valcartier, of a long voyage, of much drill in the mud at Salisbury Plain.  Now here they saw, at their feet, what war could do.

“Damn them!” said one of the boys suddenly.  “Fellows, we’ll get back at them soon.”

So they went away, a trifle silent and very grateful.  But before they left they had a glimpse of Sara Lee’s room, with the corner gone, and Harvey’s picture on the mantel.

“Some girl!” they repeated as they drove up the street.  It was the tribute of inarticulate youth.

Sara Lee went back to her bandages and her thoughts.  She had not a great deal of time to think, what with the officers stopping in to fight their paper-and-pin battles, and with letters to write and dressings to make and supplies to order.  She began to have many visitors—­officers from the French lines, correspondents on tours of the Front, and once even an English cabinet member, who took six precious lumps of sugar in his tea and dug a piece of shell out of the wall with his pocketknife as a souvenir.

Once a British aviator brought his machine down in the field by the mill, and walked over with the stiff stride of a man who has been for hours in the air.  She gave him tea and bread and butter, and she learned then of the big fighting that was to come.