"Yes, I was pretty sick. It got gangrene some. They thought I wouldn't live. I was first in a big hospital near the front, and then in a convalescent hospital in Paris. It was awfully dull when I got better. They thought if I had made an application to be réformé and retired I could be like Jacques Dupré with his wooden leg. But with you and the children here ... what could I have done with myself? So I didn't say anything, and when my time was up in the hospital I went back to the trenches. That was a year ago last winter."
"Berthe and Jean-Pierre had the mumps that winter," said their mother. "The baby didn't get it. I kept him away from them. The Boches shut us up as though we had the smallpox. They were terribly strict about any sickness. The Boche regimental doctor came every day. He took very good care of them."
"He wanted to give me a doll because I didn't cry when he looked in my throat," said Berthe.
"Of course she didn't take it," said Jean-Pierre. "I told her I'd break it all to pieces if she did."
"But she cried afterwards."
"Come," said the father, "we've finished our bread. Back to work."
That night, after the children were asleep on straw in the cellar down the road, their parents came back to wander about in the moonlight over their ravaged little kingdom. The wife said little, drawing her breath irregularly, keeping a strained grasp on her husband's arm. For the most part he succeeded in speaking in a steady voice of material plans for the future,—how he could get some galvanized roofing out of the nearest trench abri; how he could use the trunks of the felled trees to strengthen his hastily constructed brick walls, and for roof-beams; what they could plant in the garden and the field—things which she and the children could cultivate after he had gone back.
At this reminder of the inevitable farewell again before them, the wife broke out in loud wailings, shivering, clutching at him wildly. He drew her down on a pile of rubbish, put his arms around her, and said in a peremptory tone: "Paulette! Listen! You are letting the Boches beat you!" He used to her the tone he used for his squad, his new soldier's voice which the war had taught him, the tone which carried the laggards up over the top. At the steel-like ring of it his wife was silent.
He went on: "There's nothing any of us can do but to go on. The only thing to do is to go on without making a fuss. That's the motto in the army, you know. Don't make a fuss." He lifted his head and looked around at his home dismantled, annihilated. "Not to give up,—that and the flat-irons are about all the Boches have left us, don't you see?"