And so the round ledge of cobble-stones was named Liberty Fort, and then, before Nathalie realized what the suggestion carried, Tony proposed that the path at the foot of the terrace on which the fort stood, on the summit of the lower slope leading down to the meadow, be a trench.
Other suggestions followed, which culminated in a lengthy discussion, leading the children the following afternoon to the woods, where they gathered dried leaves, and little pebbles and twigs, to fill some bags, which Janet and Nathalie had made out of some old potato-sacks, to represent sand-bags to pile on top of the trench. The two girls meanwhile sat in the fort and not only made epaulettes for the young soldiers’ shoulders, but also gas-masks, which these Sons of Liberty vociferously declared that they must have, or they would be gassed.
After the Stars and Stripes, with the various flags of the Allies, had been fastened to a pole and mounted on the fort, the battle of the Marne took place, represented by these small soldiers, with guns held high, leaping over the sand-bags and rushing madly down the slope to the meadow below, which had been named “No Man’s Land.” Here, with eyes aflame and hair all tousled, they fought frenziedly with the imaginary gray uniforms of the German soldiery, who were supposed to have rushed towards them from their entrenchments, the stone wall by the road just beyond the meadow.
It was great sport, notwithstanding that their helmets—old tin pails—would insist upon falling over their faces just when some very wonderful capture was about to be made. But they soon learned not to mind a little thing like that, as Danny observed with officer-like brusqueness—he was the general-in-chief of these liberty forces—that only slackers or mollycoddles would stop fighting for a hat. So they fought most furiously, imitating in every way possible the maneuvers and tactics of the soldiers in France.
They took possession of a rustic seat on the ridge near the woods for an outpost, and here Sheila, with a big paper soldier’s cap on her head, was posted to parade with military precision before it as a sentry. Danny, meanwhile would climb a tree, to watch a make-believe enemy’s aëroplane, or to play the rôle of a bird-man, getting ready to fly in a patrol over the enemy’s entrenchments.
The parts the little girl played were numerous, sometimes acting as a canteen girl, selling lemonade and make-believe “smokes,”—twigs trimmed to represent cigarettes,—or again, playing the part of a captured Boche, always insisting that she was a prince, or some high German official. She entered into the playing of holding up her hands in token of surrender, while calling “Kamerad” with dramatic fervor. Then, as if suddenly reminded that she was a scion of royalty, she would take to fighting and kicking furiously to be released, bringing her teeth into action, and inflicting sundry bites on her captor with such energy that Nathalie, or Janet, tricked out with a white head-gear, starred with a red cross, would hurry to the scene, and bind up with soft rags the wounds of the afflicted one.
Jean, who had begun to prove that his real self was only lying dormant beneath a shroud of sorrow, was triumphantly happy as the bugler, and one day suggested that they have a tank,—he had seen one on a battle-field. An old tin can was then procured from Sam, which had done duty in holding chicken-feed. It was now made to roll, in a horribly queer way, down the slope and over No Man’s Land, maneuvered by Jean, who was inside of it, and who proved that he was a keen trailer of the Boches, as the lad always called the Germans.
The boy frightened Nathalie, sometimes, by the intense hatred he displayed whenever the Germans were mentioned, as his face would grow tense and a sudden fire would flame up in his eyes, while his one hand would clench rigidly and his little form trembled with the force of the passion within his breast.
But the children did not always play at war in France, for sometimes they were Indians, and would wriggle over the grass snake-fashion. They were all sachems, or big chiefs, named after some red-skinned hero of some Indian tale Nathalie had told them, each one intent on scalping some white man. Sometimes Jean would teach the boys how to play some of the games played in Belgium, as jet, a game which seemed to be played with a stick on a stone, and which they all seemed to enjoy. Then again they would play hopscotch in Jean’s way, and which he called “Kalinker.” But always at the end of their play they would line up in the circling ledge of stones, and, as if inspired by Nathalie’s suggestion on the day of their first visit to the fort, stand very still as they again bowed their heads in a silent prayer for the boys who were fighting “over there.”
Then, one morning, a telephone message came from Mr. Banker that he would be up that afternoon and take the children to the Flume. Whereupon they all became so exuberantly happy that Nathalie had rather a hard time pinning them down to their usual duties.