“How gay they are!” he said. “They do not seem to have been touched by the horrors of war.”
“It is the gaiety of faith,” said Eileen. “How else could they have survived the work they have done, the things they have seen? This convent was a shambles for more than three years. These rooms were filled with wounded, German wounded, and often English wounded, who were prisoners. They were the worst cases for amputation, and butcher’s work, and the nuns did all the nursing. They know all there is to know of suffering and death.”
“Yet they have not forgotten how to laugh!” said Brand. “That is wonderful. It is a mystery to me.”
“You must have seen bad things,” said Eileen. “Have you lost the gift of laughter?”
“Almost,” said Brand, “and once for a long time.”
Eileen put her hands to her breast.
“Oh, learn it again,” she said. “If we cannot laugh we cannot work. Why, I owe my life to a sense of humour.”
She spoke the last words with more than a trivial meaning. They seemed to tell of some singular episode, and Brand asked her to explain.
She did not explain then. She only said some vague things about laughing herself out of prison and stopping a German bullet with a smile.
“Why did the devils put you in prison?” asked Brand.