"I understand."
He knew how prowlers and night-thieves made harvest in the darkness among the deserted dwellings since Police and Town Guardsmen had been requisitioned to man the trenches. She went on:
"The upper story of the house is sheer wreck, as you may see, but the ground-floor is quite habitable. So much so that if the shells did not strike the poor dear place so often, I should suggest your turning it into a Convalescent Home."
"We may have to try the plan yet," said Saxham. "The Railway Institute is frightfully overcrowded."
"And," she told him, "a shell struck there yesterday evening, and burst in the larger ward."
"I had not heard of it," he said. "Was anybody hurt?"
"No one, thank God! But the fire was difficult to put out, until one of the Sisters thought of sand."
"It was an incendiary shell?" Disgust and contempt swelled his deep-cut nostrils and flamed from his vivid blue eyes. "And yet these Kaiser's gunners, in their blue-and-white Death or Glory uniforms, can hardly pretend ignorance of the Geneva Convention. But—your question?"
"It is—Children!" She beckoned to the two nuns, who stood at a little distance apart holding the washing-basket between them. "I will ask you to go on slowly before me with the basket. I will overtake you when I have spoken to Dr. Saxham."
"Surely, Reverend Mother." One tall, pale, and thin, the other round and rosy, they were alike in the placid, cheerful serenity of their good eyes and readily smiling lips. "And won't we be after taking the bundle?"