"Towed?" I said blankly.
"Towed, madame. There is no more petrol."
The major suggested that we kill him at once. But he was a perfectly good chauffeur and young. Also it developed that he had not sat on my hat. So we let him live.
"Never mind," said Miss C——; "we can give you the chauffeur's bed and he can go somewhere else."
But after a time I decided that I would rather walk back than stay overnight in that house. For the major explained that at eleven o'clock the batteries behind the town would bombard the German trenches and the road behind them, along which they had information that an ammunition train would pass.
"Another night in the cellar!" said some one. "That means no one will need any beds, for there will be a return fire, of course."
"Is there no petrol to be had?" I inquired anxiously.
"None whatever."
None, of course. There had been shops in the town, and presumably petrol and other things. But now there was nothing but ruined walls and piles of brick and mortar. However, there was a cellar.
My feet were swollen and painful, for the walk had been one long agony. I was chilled, too, from my wetting, in spite of the fire. I sat by the tiny stove and tried to forget the prospect of a night in the cellar, tried to ignore the pieces of shell and shrapnel cases lined up on the mantelpiece, shells and shrapnel that had entered the house and destroyed it.