"I've got pink shoes, too, haven't I, Fafa?"
Diane, holding Fafa very tight on the window-ledge—not because he wriggled, he was too big, but because he might have been grown up, like the little boys of other mothers, and gone away to war—was telling him what a wonderful thing it was he had come to see, and how, when he was a big man, he would always remember it, and could say to people, "On the 14th of July, 1916, I saw——"
"Yes, mummy! Oh, mummy, do you suppose that little girl's shoes are quite new for to-day?"
"Babies, you are going to see Belgian soldiers; you will always and always remember what they did for us. And there will be British soldiers; you know how they are fighting for us, just the same as papa and Uncle Raoul. And you will see the Russians, who have come from so far away to help us; and beautiful Hindus, and big Africans, and the little Anamites, and our own men."
Her voice thrilled when she said "our own men."
Her voice has that curious quality of drawing darkness: it made me feel the shadows when she said like that, "our own men."
She said, "There will be the fusilliers marins, and the cuirassiers, and the artilleurs. You may see the 75', Fafa. And there will be the chasseurs à pied, from Verdun, with their fourragère."
"Mummy, was it her mummy who gave her the little flags?"
"I think so, Fafa darling."