“But why don’t you remove them? You can put them somewhere else, and then this poor old woman can use all her garden. I should think she could hardly raise enough to eat from all this little plot, let alone from half of it.”
We had spoken in French, and of course the old proprietress had not understood. The Commissaire now turned to her, speaking the rhythmic, metrical Flemish of west Flanders. “Madame, the mynheer says that we should take up these bodies and place them in the churchyard. Do you wish it done so?”
At first she did not seem to understand, and bent inquiringly toward the Commissaire, her little gray eyes screwed up in bewilderment at his words. “What is it, mynheer?” she asked.
“Mynheer says that we should remove the three Germans and let you have your garden.”
“Oh, nay, nay,” she remonstrated, shaking her head emphatically. “Nay, mynheeren. God gave me these three graves instead of the grave of my boy. I could not tend them so well if they were in the churchyard. It is too far from my house. Nay, nay, let the three sleep here.”
“But you have not the room, madame.”
“There is room in my heart and in my garden, mynheer. I shall keep these three graves, and maybe in Germany there is some one who will keep the grave of my boy.”
“Messieurs, there is no use arguing with a Belgian peasant,” said the Commissaire of Metseys, as we walked back through the Street of the Spy to our waiting automobile. “But she has a fine spirit, that old grandmother.”