"POUR LA PATRIE"
When Aunt Roberta stepped foot on French soil it was to be expected that all things would begin to go well with her.
The port with its crowded docks, bulging store-houses, trains of wounded English going home, platoons of prisoners likewise boarding the transports for the concentration camps in England—"Ah! the terrible Boches!" shuddered Aunt Roberta when she saw these—the baggage lorries piled high with Red Cross supplies, ambulances coming down to the docks with the "grands blessés" immovable on their backs, the troops of "walking wounded"—all these sights and sounds affected the volatile little Frenchwoman strangely.
"Ah! non! non! This is not France—not my France!" she wailed. "Let us go on to Paris—and quickly."
But to go to Paris quickly in these days of the great war one must possess the influence of a marshal of France. It was a jest aboard the train: "Even les Boches could not get to Paris!"
And the train itself! "Ma foi!" was Aunt Roberta's disgusted cry, "it is a cattle train—no better! It should be seen to."
"If you were English you would write to the Times about it," laughed Belinda. She had made up her mind to suffer discomforts of all kinds when she enlisted for service in the Red Cross, and she would not lose her cheerfulness thus early in the game.
Paris was reached at last. Aunt Roberta saw little change in the gay city. There were flowers at the street corners, and flags and trophies fluttered everywhere. It chanced to be the occasion of the visit of some important men in the councils of the Allies, and the French authorities know well the value of flowers and flags, bands and gay uniforms, to cheer the hearts of a patriotic people.
This modern struggle lacks many of the elements of the old-fashioned "pomp of war"; yet there must be some display in the French capital. Else Paris would not be Paris.
They went to a rather musty hotel, Belinda and her aunt, for a day or two while they looked for an apartment. For Aunt Roberta was to remain in Paris, and her niece would want a home to go to when she was able to have a home. One could not walk right into even a base hospital, put on one's cap and apron, and go to work. There is more red tape than that about it.