A smile crept into the officer's eyes, which were blue and kindly, though they had a glint in them—something like metal—a look that a mother always noticed first when her son returned from the line.
"Où est le village?" he ventured.
"Le Curois?"
"Oui! Le Curois."
"Mais, monsieur"—her eyes widened and her hands indicated the village dwellings—"c'est ici Le Curois!"
He breathed deeply and ventured again.
"Connaissez-vous un billet pour dix officiers?"
He felt rather pleased with the sentence; it was true he had intended to get accommodation for eleven officers, but it was moderately accurate for a foreign tongue.
For answer Simunde led him, preceded by the four cows, to her domicile as "Madame," like all French housewives had received billeting instructions in the first year of the war. In conjunction with her neighbors on either side, she speedily arranged accommodation for eleven officers in their cottages, and for the officers' domestiques in the barns.
One hour later the guests of war, their battalion having come out for a rest, were dining comfortably in the home of Petite Simunde, while a sow, attended by ten small pigs, snorted approvingly outside the door.