And removing his helmet he started to make the rounds. In an instant coppers and silver rang in the steel recipient.
"Stop! that's enough."
They retired to count.
"Chic—there's some left over!"
"Never mind, she'll buy something for the kid with it."
Some one purchased the ticket.
"There now, grandma, a new ticket and enough to buy your boy a cake with, so you should worry! But as you're too young to travel alone, we're going to take you in with us. We just happen to be going your way. Here Ballut, Langlois! Quick there—take her baskets. Now then, don't let go my arm—here comes the train. Sh! don't cry, there's nothing to bawl about, we're all good fellows—all of us got grandmas who'd make just as big fools of themselves if they had to travel."
And with infinite care and tenderness a dozen hands hoisted their precious burden into the dimly lighted wooden-benched compartment.
Yes, travelling in France under such circumstances is to me more interesting than ever, for when it is not one's fellow passengers who hold the attention, there are always those thousand and one outside incidents which the eye retains involuntarily. War factories and munition plants sprung from the ground as though by magic; immense training camps in course of construction, aviation fields over which so cleverly hover those gigantic, graceful war birds, who on catching sight of the train fly low and delight the astonished passengers by throwing them a greeting, or, challenging the engineer, enter into a race.
But above all, there is the natural panorama; that marvellous succession of hills and vales, hamlets and rivers, fields and gardens, so wonderfully harmonious beneath the pearl tinted sky. How it all charms and thrills, and how near the surface is one's emotion on hearing a soldier voice exclaim: