“Do you want to go, Odette?”
Odette looked at her with an inscrutable smile. “Has that anything to do with it? I place myself in danger, perhaps, but so do our soldiers and do they hesitate? I shall be helping France.”
“To be sure, but there are other ways of helping.”
“How and where?”
“In the fields. They say help is needed there for planting the crops. We shall need all the food we can get, and it seems to me that I should prefer that kind of work.”
“I should prefer it, but I do not know where to go or how to get there when I do know.”
“We can ask Miss Lowndes. I am sure she can tell us. Please, Odette, promise me that you will do nothing till I find out from Miss Lowndes.”
“And in the meantime am I to accept charity from Henriette Jacquet? No, I thank you. She has endured me simply because of my aunt. She will be leaving in a few days at the most.”
Lucie sat silent and troubled. She would like to have said at once that Odette must come in with Paulette and herself, but she was not sure how Paulette would regard such an arrangement, and Paulette could speak her mind most positively when she wished, without regard to those concerned.
However, as if Paulette had read her mind she presently appeared from next door. “Well, my child,” she began, “I do not intend to stay here to be annihilated by those Boches. Enough of the city for me. We go. We go to the fields, to the trees, the good earth. For me I have no regrets.”