"I'm not asking you girls to look at them, or speak to them, or take them their food"—here she tucked the lot into a big string bag used for carrying vegetables—"in fact, I wouldn't allow it. Mr. Price will do all that. Won't you, John? Here you are, dear."
She handed him the bag of provisions and whisked away like a busy little bird.
Mr. Price took the bag and set off across the farmyard and out of the red-painted gate where Dick Holiday had once lingered to talk to me.
I walked beside the farmer now, for Mrs. Price had told me to bring in a cow and her calf, which were to be found in the meadow beyond that cornfield where the four Germans worked. Crossing the road we encountered a charming figure in summery attire, carrying a big green sunshade. Muriel Elvey!
She nodded patronizingly to me. Upon Mr. Price she smiled as sweetly as she did upon all men. Curious girl!
"What have you got there?" Muriel asked, tilting the sunshade to one side and pointing a white-gloved finger at the bag that the tall farmer was dangling. "Bread and milk? What, to feed the German prisoners? What fun! May I come and watch them feeding, Mr. Price? Like the animals at the Zoo sort of thing. Do let me; I'm so bored now my cousin is away. Nobody to talk to. You can't count Colonel Fielding exactly; he is such a milksop!" declared the girl whom Colonel Fielding had so ruthlessly analysed; she was obviously conscious of his opinion. "That is, I only like big men to talk to, that I can look up to!" with an upward glance. "Where are these Germans? Ah, there!"
For we had come into the cornfield now, where the captive Huns were taking their noontide rest. In a patch of shadow cast by the trees at the end of the field they stretched themselves at ease. One was lying face downwards, his shirt-sleeved elbows in the corn-stubble, and reading a letter. One sat leaning against the trunk of the tree, arms folded, cap over his eyes, his ruddy, uncharacteristically dark face turned towards us as we came up.
"He's quite good-looking for a Boche," pronounced Muriel Elvey, with a critical glance, as though this were some exhibition of strange animals—which, to be sure, it was. "But then, of course, some of them that I used to dance with over there were handsome—the officers, at all events. These are all ordinary soldiers, of course, aren't they? One's a sailor, I see. How amusing! What were they all before the war, Mr. Price? Do you know?"
"I can't tell you, Miss Elvey," the gentle giant answered this pretty chatterer. "I'd like to know myself what that dark one is—a farmer himself, I'm sure, by the way he goes about his work. But not one of these understands a word of English, and there's none of us on the farm that knows any German."
Now here my employer was mistaken. I knew German pretty well.