"I expect I shall be, Charlie," she replied. "Our tea at the chateau was almost a fantom tea."
"Gosh! isn't it so?" he said slangily. "What these French folks live on would starve me to death. Mighty glad to have regular Yankee rations. But," he added, "we'll be too late to get chow when we come to the hospital, I am afraid. We'll try Mother Gervaise."
"Who is Mother Gervaise?" asked Ruth, glad to have some topic of conversation with the ambulance driver.
"She's an old woman who used to be cook at one of these chateaux here, they say. She'll feed us well for four francs each."
"Four francs!"
"Sure. Price has gone up," said Charlie dryly. "These French folk are bound to think that every American is a millionaire. And I don't know but it is worth it," and he grinned. "Think of being looked on as a John D. Rockefeller everywhere you go! I'd never rise to such a height in the States."
"No, I presume not," Ruth admitted with a laugh. "But how is it that this Mother Gervaise, as you call her, is not afraid to stay here?"
"She stays to watch the gold grow in her stocking," Charlie replied, shrugging his shoulders almost as significantly as a Frenchman.
"Oh! Is she that much of a miser?"
"You've said it. She stayed when the Germans first came and fed them. When they retreated she stayed and met the advancing British (the French did not come first) with hot soup, and changed her price from pfennigs to shillings. Get her to tell you about it. It is worth listening to—her experience."