I have that basket now; I shall keep it always and think of the feeble fingers that twined the osier, fingers that were never to twine it again, for the gallant spirit that fought so gamely was growing more and more weary. The old bear transplanting badly, they yearn for their chimney corner and the familiar things that are all their world. The long exile from her beloved village told upon her heart, joy fell from her and, saddened and desolate, she slipped quietly away.
"She just fluttered away like a little bird," her daughter said, and I was glad to know she had not suffered at the last.
"Ah, if only I could see the village again," she would often say. "If only I might be buried there. To die here, among strangers.... Ah, mademoiselle, do you think the war will soon be over? Si seulement...." To die and be buried among her own people. To die at home. It was all she asked for, all she had left to wish for in the world. She would look at me with imploring, trustful eyes. Les Anglaises, they must know. Surely I could tell her? And in the autumn one would say, "It will be over in the spring," and in the winter cry, "Ah yes, in the summer." But spring came and summer followed, and still the guns reverberated across the hills, and winter came and the Harvest of Death was still in the reaping.
Surely God must have His own Roll of Honour for those who have fallen in the war, and many a humble name that the world has never heard of will be written on it in letters of gold.
[CHAPTER VII]
IN WHICH WE PLAY TRUANT
I
Without wishing in the least to malign my fellow-men, I am minded to declare that a vast percentage of them are hypocrites. Not that they know it or would believe you if you told them so. Your true poseur imposes acutely on himself, believing implicitly in his own deceptions; but the discerning mind is ever swift to catch an attitude, and never more so than when it is struck before the Mirror of Charity.