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But you are so vicious and so personal about it. After all, you know, the gods were kind to you it did turn back those waves of battle. You had better luck than Canute." "Besides," said the chef-major, "you can always say that you had front row stage box." There was nothing to do to save my face but to laugh with them. And they were still laughing when they tramped across the road to dinner.
I went to the foot of the stairs and called up to the chef-major. He came to the door and I explained, asking him if, we being without a post-office, he could get a letter through, and what kind of a letter I could write, as I knew the censorship was severe.
I am quite used now to the little change of front in most people when they cross the threshold. The officer nearly went on tiptoes when he got inside. He mounted the polished stairs gingerly, gave one look at the bedroom part-way up, touched his cap, and said: "That will do for the chef-major. We will not trouble you with any one else.
The chef-major turned to me caught me looking in the other direction to the west where deserted Esbly climbed the hill. "May I be very indiscreet?" he asked. I told him that he knew best. "Well," he said, "I want to know how it happens that you a foreigner, and a woman happen to be living in what looks like exile all alone on the top of a hill in war-time?"
I was sitting in the library when my guest, Chef-Major Weitzel, rode up to the gate. I had a good chance to look him over, as he marched up the path. He was a dapper, upright, little chap. He was covered with dust from his head to his heels. I could have written his name on him anywhere. Then I went to the door to meet him.
It was all like a play, and every one was so cheerful. The chef-major did not come down until his orderly called him, and when he did he looked as rosy and cheerful as a child, and announced that he had slept like one. Soon after he crossed the road for his coffee I heard the officers laughing and chatting as if it were a week-end house party.
Suddenly the chef-major leaped to his feet. "Listen listen an aeroplane." We all looked up. There it was, quite low, right over our heads. "A Taube!" he exclaimed, and before he had got the words out of his mouth, Crick-crack-crack snapped the musketry from the field behind us the soldiers had seen it. The machine began to rise.
Naturally I replied that Monsieur le Chef-Major was at home and his comrades would be welcome to treat the garden as if it were theirs, and he made me another of his bows and marched away, to return in five minutes, accompanied by half a dozen officers and a priest.
As they passed the window, where I still sat, they all bowed at me solemnly, and Chef-Major Weitzel stopped to ask if madame would be so good as to join them, and explain the country, which was new to them all. Naturally madame did not wish to. I had not been out there since Saturday night was it less than forty-eight hours before? But equally naturally I was ashamed to refuse.
When Amelie came to get my breakfast she looked a wreck I saw one of her famous bilious attacks coming. It was a little after eleven, while the chef-major was upstairs writing, that his orderly came with a paper and carried it up to him. He came down at once, made me one of his pretty bows at the door of the library, and holding out a scrap of paper said: "Well, madame, we are going to leave you.
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