A little girl five or six years old had crept silently up to the spring and was standing with big blue eyes fixed on the Americans. Her flaxen braids hung over her faded print dress, a ragged red shawl was clutched about her and her feet were thrust into clumsy sabots above which her stockings were slipping down. An uncertain smile that began to dimple her pink cheeks broadened as she met Lucy’s friendly eyes.
“Guten tag,” she murmured shyly.
And “Guten tag,” repeated a man’s voice as the fir branches were brushed aside. A big German, close to middle age, blond and deeply sunburned, ax in hand, stood behind the child, his keen eyes fixed on the workers, a touch of sourness about his lips, though he spoke pleasantly enough.
Lucy looked up at him and the enchantment of the great old forest, of the bubbling spring and the soft-footed little girl vanished in that one glance. She was back again in Germany.
CHAPTER II
FRANZ AND HIS FAMILY
Christmas, 1918, and peace on the Western Front. That was the thought in everyone’s mind at the little Badheim hospital—that for the first time since 1914 the guns were silent on Christmas Day. But Lucy’s happiness was not what she had hoped for, though she seemed as gay as the others as she helped decorate the bare hospital halls with evergreen forest boughs, dark against the bright background of Allied flags. Michelle guessed her secret longing, nevertheless, with the quick sympathy which made the French girl so readily understand the joys and sorrows of those she loved.
“It is not the same for you as for me—this Noël,” she said to Lucy as they worked together to make the long tables cheerful for the homesick soldiers’ eyes, “for you have not your brother back.”
“It isn’t only that I miss him, Michelle,” exclaimed Lucy, glad to put her troubled thoughts into words for Michelle’s friendly ear, “it’s that he’s still in danger. They say he is only scouting over the Bolshevik lines, but you know what that means. The enemy is there—I can’t help worrying.”
“I know you cannot,” agreed Michelle, without offering useless consolation. “It is very hard. I thought Maman and I were of all the most unlucky when Armand was shot on the day of l’armistice, but now he is almost well and we have no more to fear.”