It was a suggestion. Afternoon tea for the English! An opportunity for the chateau to furnish an important British munition of war, as the battalion halted waiting orders from somebody up ahead! Jacqueline made a pail of tea, which the three passed out, along with slices of bread spread with jam as long as there was any left.
"Jolly good of you!" said the officers. "Such good tea, too—and jam! This takes a bit of beating. Thanks awfully!"
The battalion passed on with the tide of battle.
"This is the only time that I have not felt perfectly helpless," said Helen. "There is so little a woman can do when fighting is all that counts."
"I was thinking of that myself," said Phil. "How helpless I am, though an able-bodied man!"
"But you did knock a German down!" said Helen, with one of her mischievous glances.
From the terrace they could now see the French everywhere, in the ravines and on the roads, sweeping across the fields in the wonderfully ordered system of a great army which had had generations of training.
"It is good—good—good!" said Helen.
They had recovered something which they had lost: the sense of freedom. The chateau and the grounds were once more their own; their minds and their souls were their own. Jacqueline's exaltation expressed itself in an amazingly good dinner; Helen's in a series of fresh cartoons over their coffee, which included "our hero" from the Southwest knocking down the German.
A call from the curé brought word that trains would begin running to Paris on the morrow, which was a reminder to all that their period of isolation was over; and for Phil a strange and memorable holiday would be at an end. Helen went out with the curé and Phil and Henriette turned up the path. After they had watched the flashes of the guns in the distance for a while, they started walking slowly back and forth.