“Oh, you will find more than one soldier here who already knows. Only we have to bring the willow twigs, and they will make of them baskets in one afternoon.”
“I’ll get some to-morrow. I can go to the meadows, if Elizabeth comes with me. I must stay a while with Paul Schwartz now, Michelle. He is not well to-day, and I said I would look after him.”
“I will come with you for a moment,” said Michelle, making a wry face, but hiding her feelings quickly. “They will never let me come here to help if I do nothing for the Boches. He looks not so vilain as the rest, I think—like a poor silly boy.”
The German to whom Michelle gave this unusual praise had certainly nothing bold nor ferocious about him. As he lay weakly back in his chair, his blue eyes wandered about the hall with a kind of vague curiosity, his blond hair lying in uncut locks against his pale face. For the little that Lucy had seen of him, he had been quiet and melancholy, making few demands on her attention or on that of the nurses. So far, she had not felt interested enough to ask him questions, but this morning as she sat down beside him, with sewing in her hands, she could think of no other way to amuse him.
“Where do you live, Paul?” she asked, wrinkling her forehead a little over the effort of speaking German. Michelle laughed at her labored accent, but the soldier understood her, and his dull, blue eyes lighted up a trifle at her words.
“I come from the Schwarzwald, Fräulein,” he answered, nodding his head slowly as he spoke, as though for him the simple fact was full of meaning.
“Oh, do you?” said Lucy, suddenly reduced to silence. His words held a strange meaning for her, too. The Black Forest, in which she had never set foot, was familiar ground, nevertheless. All Elizabeth’s stories in the old days had been about it. It was full of gnomes and elves—that she knew. The people you first met when you ventured into it were Hansel and Gretel, going toward the house built of cake and candy. She had never thought of German soldiers living there.
“What did you do in the forest, Paul?” she asked vaguely.
“I lived there,” said the soldier, his interest growing with awakening recollection, “in my little house with my family, just inside the forest’s border. I am a wood-cutter and we had a fine herd of pigs. The market town is not three miles away—I had a donkey, too.” The light died out of his eyes as he looked gloomily down at his injured leg. Lucy thought she had never seen a man so unfitted to be a soldier.
“How long have you been fighting?” asked Michelle, her eyes lifted suddenly to his face.