The boys ate a great deal, and the girl was uncannily intelligent. Since landing in England they had had it drummed into them that they were heroes; they had been acclaimed with their compatriots as the saviours of Europe; they had had speeches made to them apprising them of the fact that the gratitude of all the world could never repay the debt that civilization owed them. They therefore accepted as their due the attentions and kindness shown them. They ate jam at all their meals and asked for butter with their dinner; they drank red wine and put a great deal of sugar in it; they complained that the coffee was not good. They borrowed Mrs. Mulholland's seal-skin coat and Kitty's silk scarves when they felt chilly, and they sat in the drawing-room writing letters or looking at illustrated papers all day long. They spoke French in undertones among themselves and accepted everything that was provided for them without any undue display of gratitude. Had they not saved Europe? Would Mrs. Mulholland still have a seal-skin coat to her back but for Belgium? Had it not been for King Albert, would not the Uhlans and the Death's Head hussars be sprawling on the Mulholland sofa, eating the Mulholland jam, criticizing the Mulholland coffee? Comment donc!
And had they not themselves, in order to save Europe, given up their home and their business—a stuffy little restaurant (Au Boeuf à la Mode, Épicerie, Commestibles) down a dingy Brussels street?
The restaurant soon became a Grand Hotel in their fond reminiscences. Le souvenir, cet embellisseur, swept the sardine-tins, the candles, the lemons, and the flies from its windows, built up a colonnaded front, added three or four stories and filled them with rich and titled guests.
"What was the name of your hotel?" inquired Mrs. Mulholland. "We stopped in Brussels once on our way to Spa, and I remember that we stayed in a most excellent hotel—The Britannique, or The Metropole, or something."
"Tell them," said Mme. Pitou to her daughter Toinon who acted as interpreter,—"tell them the name of our hotel—in English."
"Restaurant to the Fashionable Beef," said Mademoiselle Pitou; and Madame Pitou sighed and shook her head despondently. "Hotel," she corrected, "not Restaurant. 'Hotel to the Fashionable Beef.' Toinon," she added, "do ask these people to give us potage aux poireaux this evening, for I cannot and will not eat that black broth of false turtle any more."
CHAPTER VII
The craze for refugees cooled slightly in the neighbourhood after that. The first rush of enthusiastic generosity abated, and when friends met at knitting-parties and compared refugees there was a certain ægritude on the part of those who had them, and a certain smiling superiority on the part of those who had not. They were spoken of as if they were a disease, like measles or mumps.
"I hear that Lady Osmond has them," said Mrs. Mellon.