"Non, non, Madam. You mustn't go with them. Don't you know who they are?"
It was a rough-faced little peasant, and his blue eyes were full of distress.
I felt startled and impressed, and wondered if the five young men were murderers.
"They are the Newspaper Sellers!" muttered the blue-eyed peasant under his breath.
If he had said they were madmen his tone could not have been more awestruck.
After a while I found a little cart with two seats facing each other, two hard wooden seats. One bony horse stood in the shafts. But I liked the look of the three Belgian women who were getting in, and one of them had a wee baby. That decided me. I felt that the terrors of the long drive before me would be curiously lightened by that baby's presence. Its very tininess seemed to make things easier. Its little indifferent sleeping face, soft and calm and fragrant among its white wool dainties, seemed to give the lie to dread and terror; seemed to hearten one swiftly and sweetly, seemed to say: "Look at me, I'm only a month old. But I'm not frightened of anything!"
And now I must say good-bye to Jean, and good-bye to his two plump young sisters.
They are the dearest friends I have in the world—or so it seems to me as I bid them good-bye.
"Bonne chance, Madam!" they whisper.
I should like to have kissed Jean, but I kissed the sisters instead, then feeling as if I were being cut in halves, I climbed, lonely and full of sinister dread, into the little cart, and the driver cracked his whip, shouting, "Allons, Fritz!" to his bony horse and off we started, a party of eight all told. The three Belgian women sat opposite me; two middle-aged men were beside me, and the driver and another man were on the front seat.