“Let them,” she says. “They deserve no better.”
In a half-hearted way the old man excuses them. After all they are prisoners, cut off from their wives and children.
“Well, and what worse off are they than our men who are fighting at the front? The hypocrites! The traitors!”
“You’re hard, woman, you’re hard,” says the old man.
It is another fortnight later. The black magic has been going on as before, and Compound Number Two, on the right of the avenue, is ready for occupation.
At the same hour in the evening Mona hears the tramp, tramp, tramp, as of another army coming up the high road. It is the second company of the Germans, and they are a hundredfold worse-looking than the first. A coarse, dirty, brutal lot, some of them in rags—sailors, chiefly, who have been captured at the docks in Liverpool and Glasgow and in certain cases taken off ships at sea. But they are all in high spirits, or pretend to be so. They come up the avenue laughing, singing and swearing.
Mona is standing at the door to look at them. They see her, address her with coarse pleasantries which she does not understand, and finally make noises with their lips as if they were kissing her. She turns indoors.
“The scum! The beasts!” she says.
“You’re hard, woman, you’re hard,” says the old man.
A month later Compound Number Three is ready, and once more there is the sound of marching on the high road. Mona, who is in the house, will not go to the door again. She is sour of heart and stomach at the thought that she has to live among the Germans and help to provide for them.