Even Madame Job is breaking out in an unexpected quarter. She is satisfied for the moment as to Albert’s safety, so I am surprised to find her this evening occupying her favourite position on the lowest step of the kitchen stairs with her blue check apron over her head.
Spasmodic snuffles under the cotton screen warn me what to expect. I gently pull down the covering and stroke her face.
“We shall win,” I say consolingly.
At this Madame breaks down completely.
“Win? The poor, poor Prussians will be killed, all killed. There was one so young to-night, with eyes so sad.” (Snort and snuffle.) “Have they not also wives and mothers who will mourn their loss?”
I find no words in which to confute this obvious truth.
Madame soon revives. In her careful Walloon brain she has conceived what she calls “un plan.”
“If I care for the Prussians” (I know she is hoping that heaps and heaps will be brought in from the battlefield to test her word), “perhaps they will care for my Albert should he be wounded in the forts there below....”
I do not dare to tell her that the Belgians have themselves blown up the Chaudfontaine forts and that her beloved Albert is doubtless numbered with the dead....