“About—three years.” The German seemed uncertain. “Yes,” he added, nodding thoughtfully, “it must be all that time since the day I got my papers and was told to join my regiment. At the village I heard how the Russians were getting ready to invade the Fatherland. Then how the English would attack us on the other side. At first my wife hoped they would not call me—there were so many others. They said, too, that we could quickly beat the enemy. But they did call me.” He ended with a dull melancholy that took the little life out of his face. “I had to leave everything and go. I don’t know how things are with Hedwig now.”
“But the Russians weren’t invading Germany,” said Lucy indignantly, while Michelle flashed a warning glance at her. She lowered her voice, but finished obstinately, “Nor the English, either.”
“Yes, that is what we heard,” maintained Paul, indifferently. “Our Kaiser called us to defend the Fatherland. It was all strange to me, for we don’t get much news there in the forest.”
Michelle smiled at Lucy’s flushed and angry face. “It is no use to talk with him of that,” she said in English, with a shake of the head. “He would not understand you—not in many days. The Kaiser told him. ‘Allons! Marchez!’—that’s all he knows.”
Lucy was silent a moment. “Were you ever in the Black Forest, Michelle?” she asked, giving up her argument.
“Oh, yes, often. Two summers I have been there. It is beautiful—so big and still.” Michelle’s eyes shone with the words, as though at the remembrance of happy summer days gone by.
“What are there in it besides Germans?” Lucy asked, smiling to herself at the question.
“Bears,” said Michelle, laughing—“and many animals. Herds of pigs, too, like this man’s. Many wood-cutters live near the border. And, further in, are lodges for huntsmen.”
“I’ve always wanted to go there,” said Lucy rather sadly. “I don’t care so much about it now.”
“Oh, it is lovely still,” Michelle objected. “Perhaps when the war is ended the Germans will not be so many there.”