"A friend of yours, Miss?"
"Yes, Peter."
"At the front, 'm?"
"At the front, Peter," I answered. I could not have said anything else, and even if I live to be a hundred, I shall not think of you any other way except as at the front, fighting if need be, carrying messages across the danger zone, with no thought of danger.
It was a great advance in Peter to admit the existence of a front; he has persisted in declaring the war a bit of sensational romance, devised by the House of Lords for their own entertainment. It was a brooding Peter who busied himself with rubbing up the knives,—he has been unusually attentive to Madge since her escapade; his mind seemed to be running on troubles greater than his own.
"Do you know where our army is supposed to be now, 'm?" he asked, when I told him that we had no good news from the seat of war.
Our army! We were getting on! I gave him my best information about our hard-pressed line in the west.
"It's astonishing that those Germans are able to fight at all, 'm, when they have once met the British," said Peter gloomily, polishing a huge carving knife as if it were a sword. "Meeting the French, that is different; they are a flighty people and very hexcitable."
"Your knowledge of history needs to be brought up to date, Peter," I ventured. "Anything less flighty than that magnificent people of France at this present moment the world has never seen."
"It must be very difficult, 'm, fighting on the Continent, for one who does not speak the foreign tongues. And I couldn't eat frogs, 'm; I'd almost rather 'ave the Germans as allies; sausages aren't as bad as frogs by 'alf."