But her voice bubbles as she speaks, and, though I cannot see her face, I suddenly become aware that for some reason or other this girl is filled with quite extraordinary happiness.
Picking our way along the road in the dark, with the cannons growling away fiercely some six miles off, she tells me her "petite histoire."
She is a little Brussels bride, in search of her soldier bridegroom, and she has, by dint of persistent, never-ceasing coaxing, persuaded her old mother to set out from Brussels, all this long, long way, through Antwerp, to Holland, then to Flushing, then to Folkestone, then to Calais, then to Dunkirk, and finally here, to the Front, where her soldier bridegroom will be found. He is here. He has been wounded. He is better. He has always said, "No! no! you must not come." And now at last he had said, "Come," and here she is!
She is so pretty, so simple, so girlish, and sweet, and the mother is such a perfect old duck of a mother, that I fall in love with them both.
Presently we find ourselves in the quaint old Flemish Inn with oil lamps and dark beams.
The stout, grey-moustached landlord hastens forward.
"Have you a message for Madame Louis." The bride gasps out her question.
"Oui, Oui, Madame!" the landlord answers heartily. "There is a message for you. You are to wait here. That is the message!"
"Bien!"
Her eyes flame with joy.