The tears came to Lucie’s eyes as she lifted Pom Pom into her visitor’s lap. The dog looked inquiringly at his mistress but seemed to understand that he was to remain, and was very quiet under the caressing touch of Odette’s hand.
“We had a little farm,” Odette went on, “and we were very happy, but I shall never see that home again, for it does not exist. There is nothing there, nothing but deep holes in the ground, no trees, no house, no barn; all is destroyed, the house and barn burned, the trees cut down, the fields plowed up by bullets and bombs. There is nothing to go back to, and no one is there. Oh, I know, for I have heard my aunt tell it over and over again, and when I shut my eyes at night I can imagine it, that horrible place of holes where no one lives. I do not wish to see it, but sometimes I dream of my home, yet when I wake I know it is only a dream, only a dream.” She shook her head mournfully, and the tragic expression in her eyes deepened. In another moment, however, she tossed up her head with a gesture of defiance. “I will not think of it. I will think only of France, and of her soldiers. You have a soldier papa. Tell me of him and of your home.”
“My papa is a captain. He went at once. He was wounded, but at last news he was improving. Paulette managed to find out this, and we are now trying to get word of my mamma, and of my grandfather. We expected to find my grandfather here in Paris, but he has not come and those good ladies at the ouvroir are trying to find out what has become of him. Our home was not a farm but in a small town where my father had a factory as his father had before him. We are afraid all is destroyed, but we do not know. We had a pretty garden and such pleasant neighbors. I hope, oh, I do hope all is not destroyed, and that we can go back. I cannot imagine being happy anywhere else.”
Odette looked at her compassionately. “It seems that you are very young,” she said. “Me, I feel so old. I think I have lived many years in a few weeks, and yet I am only fifteen.”
“And I only a year younger,” Lucie said. “Why do I seem so young to you, Odette?”
“Because you still have things to expect, to hope for. I have nothing, because all has been taken.”
“Oh, but Odette!”
“La, la, let us not speak of it. I shall laugh and be gay, very gay like the soldiers. Is it for the soldiers you are knitting?”
“Yes, but I cannot do the toe of my sock without Paulette. I am very stupid about it.”
“Ah, that is where I can help you, for I have been knitting socks for so long a time I cannot remember when I began it. Give me your knitting, I shall like to work upon it.” She took the sock which Lucie handed to her, and at once made the needles fly so fast that Lucie looked on in admiration.