"They're the Mère Économe's. There wasn't time to dress properly. We were turned out of the Convent, haven't I told you!—just as we stood. It was early in the morning. Seven o'clock Mass was just over. We were trooping in to the Réfectoire for coffee. We went to Mass and did our lessons, in spite of the awful guns. Then ... all at once—" She began to laugh, and a mask of fine glittering dew broke out over her peachy face from the temples to the upper lip. "The earth began to shake. The French were retreating from Charleroi. They streamed past and past, horsemen and guns and marching men, just as they'd gone by two days before when we waved and cheered them from the garden. Only this time there were wounded men.... The ambulance waggons were heaped with them—all bloody and dreadful.... Oh! And then the shells began to fall ... among the waggons and on the Convent! "The Germans are coming," the soldiers called to us. 'Fly while you have time!'"
"Shut up!" Rhona ordered the girl. "Haven't I told you not to talk, you stoopid! There weren't any shells—it's all your silly nerves. There might have been—but there weren't!"
"But the shells were hitting the Convent walls ... and bursting. The house was on fire. And the French Commandant said to the Maitresse Générale: 'It will be rasé over your heads if you remain, Madame. On n'y fait quartier à personne—les Allemands! They are advancing in incredible numbers. The road to Calais lies open before them because of the Great Catastrophe of yesterday. Our hearts are sad, not only for our own losses, but for the misfortunes of our friends across the——'"
"WILL you be silent! He never said so!"
With her scarlet head surmounting the shiny waterproof, Brenda rather reminded one of a Green Hackle, the likeness to the splendid gauze-winged fly being increased by the brightness of her eyes. Very round, very wide open, and with strange lines radiating from the pin-point speck of pupil to the outer band ringing the hazel irids, they stared from that crystal-beaded mask of hers. "But, Rhona," she reiterated, bewildered by her senior's vehemence of contradiction, "he did say so! And the Convent was burning when we left!"
"If it was, you're to forget it—d'you hear me? And look here, if you dare to talk like this at home——"
"I won't. I know the Mater mustn't be upset! Look here, I'll swear I won't, if that'll do! Only don't say I've got to stop upstairs, will you? They're so gay here," Brenda pleaded humbly—"it'll help me to forget!"
"All right!" and with a warning scowl from Rhona the sisters parted. Lynette Saxham asked, looking after the little bizarre figure of Brenda with wistful tenderness in her eyes:
"Will she recover from the shock of the horrors she has seen the more quickly because you forbid her to speak of them?"
"I don't know.... I haven't thought.... It's my mother I bother most about.... You see, Roddy's Battery—Roddy's my brother—has gone with the Expedition. If Brenda talks rawhead and bloody-bones—but I'll take care she don't, the little fool!"