The plump and active mothers of these nice little Flemish girls sold the aprons and post-cards.
"Ah, messiou," said Colonel Bramble, "before the War we used to talk about frivolous France; now it is stern and prudent France."
"Yes," added the doctor, "the French are hard and severe on themselves. I begin to understand the Boche who said, 'Man does not aspire to happiness, only Englishmen.' There is, among your peasants of the north, an admirable voluntary asceticism."
"Did you ever see, messiou," said the padre, "in our country, before the War, the Frenchman of the music-hall? The little fellow with the black beard, who gesticulates and harangues? I believed it, messiou, and never pictured these devout and industrious villagers."
"I like to see them on Sunday morning," said the major, "when the bell for Mass starts ringing, and they all come out of their houses together, old men, women and children, as if they were going to a theatre. Ah, messiou, why didn't you tell us all about this before the War?"
"The reason is," said Aurelle, "that we didn't know it ourselves."
CHAPTER XII
Orion's belt rose higher in the wintry sky; the roads were frozen hard. The mail vans overflowed more and more every day with enormous quantities of puddings and Christmas cards, and the festive season recalled the joys of life to the division and the village.
The preparations for the Christmas dinner occupied Aurelle and the padre for some time. The latter found a turkey worthy of the royal table at a farm; Aurelle hunted from house to house for chestnuts; Parker attended himself to the cooking, and mixed a salad of which he was very proud, but the colonel examined it long and doubtfully. As for the doctor, he was sent off with Aurelle to Bailleul to buy some champagne, and insisted on sampling several different brands, which inspired him to give vent to some strange doctrines on things in general on the way home.
He obtained permission to invite his friends Berthe and Lucie to come in at the end of dinner to drink a bumper of champagne in the Mess, and when they entered in their Sunday dresses, the colonel played "Destiny Waltz," speed 61. The orderlies had hung a great bunch of mistletoe over the door, and the girls asked ingenuously if it was not the custom in England to kiss under the mistletoe.