Mademoiselle smiled and nodded.
"So probably I shall be sent wherever I wish—and my heart goes but to Belgium. It is natural."
"Yes, it is natural. May you have luck," he cried holding out his hand.
"Mademoiselle is going to Belgium," he told the young people who were awaiting their turn at the gang-plank.
They gazed at her with a sort of awe. Tales of war's horrors were common in the ears of all of them, and it was difficult to believe that the slight figure standing there so quietly beside them would see with her own eyes the uptorn fields and downfallen cottages, the dying men and the miserable women and children they had seen only in imagination.
"Oh," gasped Ethel Blue; "oh! Belgium! Oh, Mademoiselle, won't you send us back a Belgian baby? The Club would love to take care of it! Wouldn't we? Wouldn't we?" she cried turning from one to another with glittering eyes.
"We would, Mademoiselle, we would," cried every one of them; and as the big ship was warped out of the pier they waved their handkerchiefs and their hands and cried over and over, "Send us a Belgian baby!"
"Un bébé belge! Ces chers enfants!" ejaculated a motherly Frenchwoman who was weeping near them. "A Belgian baby! These dear children."
And then, to James's horror, she kissed him, first on one cheek and then on the other.