In two minutes the Twins were on their way, but it was more than an hour before they got back. First, the shop-keeper was out, and when he got back it took him some time to find large enough flags. At last, however, they returned, each carrying one done up in a paper parcel.
"Here are the flags," Pierre announced proudly to the Verger, who met them at the entrance.
"Yes," said Father Varennes, "here they are, and here you are. Come in, your Mother wants to see you." The children followed him through the door, and although they had been told that the wounded were to be brought to the Cathedral, they were not prepared for the sight that met their eyes as they entered. On the heaps of straw lay tossing moaning men, in the gray uniforms of the German army.
Pierrette seized Pierre's hand. "Oh," she shuddered, "I didn't think they'd be Germans!"
"They aren't—all of them," said the Verger, a little huskily. "Some of them are French. The Church shelters them all."
Doctors in white aprons were already in attendance upon the wounded, and nurses with red crosses on the sleeves of their white uniforms flitted silently back and forth on errands of mercy. The two children, clinging to each other and gazing fearfully about them, followed the Verger down the aisle. As they passed a heap of straw upon which a wounded German lay, something bright rolled from it to them and dropped at Pierrette's feet. Pierre sprang to pick it up. It was a German helmet. Across the front of it were letters. Pierre spelled them—"Gott mit uns." "What does that mean?" he asked the Verger.
"God with us," snorted Father Varennes. "I suppose the poor wretches actually believe He is."
The Abbe' was waiting for them in the aisle, and he took from them the flags and the helmet. He had heard the Verger's reply, and guessed what the question must have been. "My boy," he said, laying his hand gently upon Pierre's head for an instant, "God is not far from any of his children. It is they who, through sin, separate themselves from Him! But never mind theology now. Your Mother is waiting for you. I will take you to her."
The Twins thought it strange that the Abbe' should himself guide them to their Mother. They followed his broad back and swinging black soutane to the farthest corner of the hospital space. There, beside a mound of straw upon which was stretched a wounded soldier in French uniform, knelt their Mother, and the Twins, looking down, met the eyes of their own Father gazing up at them.
"Gently! my dears, gently!" cautioned their Mother, as the children fell upon their knees beside her in an agony of tears. "Don't cry! he is wounded, to be sure, but he will get well, though he can never again fight for France. We shall see him every day, and by and by he will be at home again with us."