Presently Paulette came in laden with baskets and bundles.
“You have too much there, Paulette,” said Mons. Du Bois.
“Better throw them or give them away than leave them for the boches,” she responded grimly.
“The chickens, Ninette the goat, Mousse, we cannot leave them,” cried Lucie in distress.
“We must,” declared Paulette doggedly. “Mousse will be able to fend for himself; he is a good mouser. The chickens,” she made a little dubious sound. “Le bon Dieu knows what will become of them.”
“All our pretty hens, the beautiful big cocks, and poor Ninette. Is it not possible that we can take them to some safe place?”
“Where?” asked Paulette sarcastically.
“I don’t know. O, I don’t know, but it seems so very dreadful.”
“They will not be here long,” replied Paulette gruesomely with a lift of her eyebrows.
Lucie did not dare continue the subject with all the possibilities it suggested, but she did say, “Pom Pom will go. He must. Nothing, no one, shall persuade me to leave him behind.”