With that the old woman hobbled away, and quickly reappeared with “Marie,” a kindly-eyed, fine type of a girl, of quite superior manner.
Henri questioned: “Vous parlez le Français?” (You speak French?)
“Oui, monsieur; j’ai demeure en le sud-est.” (Yes, monsieur; I have lived in the southeast.)
The girl quickly added, with a smiling display of a fine row of teeth: “And I speak the English, too. I have nursed the sick in London.”
“Glory be!” Billy using his favorite expression. “Get busy!”
Marie “got busy” with little pocket scissors, cut the jacket and shirt free of the wound, washed away the clotted blood and soon brightly announced:
“No bullet here; it went right through the flesh, high up; much blood, but no harm to last.”
Cutting up a linen hand-towel, Marie skillfully bandaged the wound, and, later, as neatly mended the slashes she had made in Henri’s jacket and shirt.
For ten days the boys rested at the farmhouse, Henri rapidly recovering strength.
They learned much about Belgium from Marie. She laughingly told Henri that his French talk was good to carry him anywhere among the Walloons in the southeastern half of Belgium, but in the northwestern half he would not meet many of the Flemings who could understand him. “You would have one hard time to speak Flemish,” she assured him.