Wayland indicated an old high-backed chair of oak, quaintly embellished with ancient leather in faded blue and gold. It had been a royal chair in its day, or the Fleur-de-Lys lied.
The flight-lieutenant seated himself with a rather stiff bow.
"If you need canvas"—Wayland hesitated—then, gravely: "There are, in my room, a number of artists' toiles—old chassis with the blank canvas still untouched."
"Exactly what we need!" exclaimed the other. "What luck, now, to meet a painter in such a place as this!"
"They belonged to my father," explained Wayland. "We—Marie-Josephine and I—have always kept my father's old canvases and colours—everything of his.... I'll be glad to give them to a British soldier.... They're about all I have that was his—except that oak chair you sit on."
He rose on his crutches, spoke briefly in Breton to Marie-Josephine, then limped slowly away to his room.
When he returned with half a dozen blank canvases the flight-lieutenant, at table, was eating pork and black bread and drinking Breton cider.
Wayland seated himself, laid both crutches across his knees, picked up one of the chassis, and began to rip from it the dusty canvas. It was like tearing muscles from his own bones. But he smiled and chatted on, casually, with the air-officer, who ate as though half starved.
"I suppose," said Wayland, "you'll start[pg 86] back across the Channel as soon as you secure petrol enough?"
"Yes, of course."