He seized the little girls, and with a nod and "Courage, Louisa," he disappeared.
Oh, the kindness of that broken-hearted Luxemburg woman.
Her poor heart was bleeding for her children, and she kept on weeping, and asking me a thousand questions about England, while she made coffee for me, and spread a white cloth over the kitchen table. What would happen to her little ones? Would the English be kind to them? Would they be safe in England? And over and over again she repeated the same sad little story of how she had sent them away, her three beloveds, George, Clare, and little Ada with the long fair curls; sent them away out of danger, and had never heard a word from them since the day she kissed them and bade them good-bye at the crowded train.
The whole of that day I remained in the kitchen there at the back of the café I could hear the Germans coming in and out. They were blowing their own trumpets all the time, telling always of their victories.
Ada's little old husband would walk up and down, whistling the cheeriest pipe of a whistle I have ever heard. It did me good to listen to him. It brought before one in the midst of all this terror and ruin an image of birds.
At six o'clock that day, when dusk began to gather, Ada shut up the café, put out the lights, and she and her old husband and I sat together in the kitchen round the fire.
Presently, in came Henri, with my little bag, accompanied by Madame X., and her big husband, and two enormous yellow dogs.
They told me that the Danish Doctor came back at three o'clock, asked for me, and was told I had gone to Holland.
"If it were not for the Danish Doctor I should feel quite safe," I said. "Was he angry?"
"He was very surprised."