“Can’t tell. I’ll let you know in time. All you’ve got to do is to be ready.”
He went off to continue his work of warning. Some of the people at once began to depart, refugees again; others sought safety in cellars, dreading a nearer roar of guns and the whistle of shells. Twenty-four hours of dread. No one slept that night. Who knew when a shell might come crashing down upon the town? Big Bertha was doing deadly work in Paris, what might not one expect here?
Then came the morning when out of their houses and cellars flocked the people. A shout went up. The three in the little new house ran to the gate. A boy was running up the street waving his arms and crying: “They’re driven back! They’re driven back! Vive la France!”
“We’re safe! We’re safe!” cried Lucie.
“For the moment,” returned Paulette. “I for one do not unpack.”
But though, as time went on, there was a swaying back and forth of the line, no farther in that direction did the foe advance. Not a shot fell in the town, and, beyond, the country was peaceful and smiling.
For days those in the little town waited tremblingly the German advance. Must they be driven out a second time? It seemed almost as if it must be so for many towns and villages which had been reëstablished were now being evacuated and the dwellers therein taken farther back to safety, with all their supplies and even their livestock, much of this the excellent work of the American Committee for Devastated France. As time went on and danger threatened more and more, it almost seemed that the big guns would be directed the next moment upon the town, and that the bombs would finish the work of destruction begun four years before. But beyond a certain point the enemy did not penetrate. The fields were unscathed, the buildings unscarred. The great Juggernaut of war had not crushed them.
There was much hard fighting, so many lives lost that Lucie at last came to be thankful that her father was out of it, even though his might not be an enviable position. At least she might hope that he would survive and that she could see him again. That veil of silence still covered her mother, while the Allies were continuing their triumphant advance, and town after town was liberated.
Then one day the veil was lifted. It was in October. Lucie, with her pigeons flocking around her, heard a sudden call from Odette. “Come, come quickly, there are persons coming up the street and I think they are looking for this house.”
Lucie went to the gate to see two men and a woman approaching. One was a soldier with an empty sleeve and wearing the French uniform. A second soldier was plainly an American, and as he came nearer Lucie distinguished her uncle Philip. The woman she did not recognize at the first instant, but presently with a wild cry of joy the girl darted out the gate to throw herself, sobbing hysterically, into the arms of her very own mother.