- turn with rich presents from Paris—tin soldiers, Queen-*dolls,
mechanical toys. Hélène, the elder girl, was different. She had looked curiously at her mother when the children prattled like that, and Madame Chéri had pretended to believe in the father's home-coming. Once or twice the girl had said, "Papa may be killed," in a matter-of-fact way. Yet she had been his devoted comrade. They had been such lovers, the father and daughter, that sometimes the mother had been a little jealous, so she said in her frank way to Pierre Nesle, smiling as she spoke. The war had made Hélène a realist, like most French girls to whom the idea of death became common-*place, almost inevitable, as the ceaseless slaughter of men went on. The German losses had taught them that.
I had the Colonel's dressing-room—he had attained the grade of Colonel before Verdun, so Pierre told me—and Madame Chéri came in while I was there to see that it was properly arranged for me. Over his iron bed-*stead (the Germans had taken the woollen mattress, so that it had been replaced by bags of straw) was his portrait as a lieutenant of artillery, as he had been at the time of his marriage. He was a handsome fellow, rather like Hélène, with her delicate profile and brown eyes, though more like, said Madame Chéri, their eldest boy Edouard.
"Where is he?" I asked, and that was the only time I saw Madame Chéri break down, utterly.
She began to tell me that Edouard had been taken away by the Germans among all the able-bodied men and boys who were sent away from Lille for digging trenches behind the lines, in Easter of '16, and that he had gone bravely, with his little pack of clothes over his shoulder, saying, "It is nothing, maman. My Father taught me the word courage. In a little while we shall win, and I shall be back. Courage, courage!"
