At eight o’clock she complained of being hungry, and I felt the need of food myself. With her customary promptness she set out to discover food, leaving me alone, a prey to sad misgivings. In a short time, however, she returned and asked me if I’d seen a piece of wire anywhere.
“I’ve got considerable barbed wire sticking in me in various places,” I said rather tartly, “if that will do.”
But she only stood, staring about her in the semidarkness.
“A lath with a nail in the end of it would answer,” she observed. “Didn’t you step on a nail last night?”
Well, I had, and at last we found it. It was in the end of a plank and seemed to be precisely what she wanted. She took it away with her, and was gone some twenty minutes. At the end of that time she returned carrying carefully a small panful of fried bacon.
“I had to wait,” she explained. “He had just put in some fresh slices when I got there.”
While we ate she explained.
“There is a small opening to the street,” she said, “where there is a machine gun, now covered with debris. Just outside I perceived a soldier cooking his breakfast. Of course there was a chance that he would not look away at the proper moment, but he stood up to fill his pipe. I’d have got his coffee too, but in the fight he kicked it over.”
“What fight?” I asked.
“He blamed another soldier for taking the bacon. He was really savage, Lizzie. From the way he acted I gather that they haven’t any too much to eat.”