Claire René no longer walked in the forest. Sometimes she would lie down on a mossy place and look up through the tall trees at the patches of blue sky overhead. She wondered whether the good God still kept His home above, whether He, too, were hungry, whether the Holy Mother had work to do when her back ached and her fingers wouldn't move and were thin and bony, like young dead birds that sometimes fell from nests.
Once, when Claire René was thinking such thoughts, she saw Jacques come running toward her. His eyes were bright and shiny, and she had a fear that they might drop out of his head, as the quick breath dropped out of his mouth.
"Listen, ma petite!" he cried.
He dropped on the mossy place beside her and rocked back and forth with his hands clasped about his shaking knees. Claire René was used to waiting. She waited until Jacques found breath for speech.
Then he told her how the "Great Man from America" was coming to save France! How he was sending a million strong sons before him. How there was hope come to heavy hearts!
Claire René wanted to ask a great many questions. But Jacques went right on, talking, talking—about the right flank and the left flank and the boches and the Americans. Claire René hoped his tongue would not be too tired to answer one of her questions.
"What is America, my little one? Why, the greatest country in the world, excepting France. Where is America, my little one? Why, across the Atlantic Ocean, far from France."
Claire René sat very still with her hands in her lap. Jacques was a wise man. He knew a great deal. All old people were wise; but such strange things made them happy, far-away things that they couldn't ever touch or see, things out in the big world that went round and round. She knew that Clément and Fernand and Alphonse were out in the big world, going round and round; but in her heart she saw them only in the forest, in the garden patch, by the hearth in the tiny house, asleep in their high white bed.
In these places she could still feel their arms about her, hear their laughter, listen for their step. But out in the world! What were they doing? How could she know? Jacques made her feel very lonely. Never once did he speak of her three brothers; on and on he went about the "Great Man from America."
Presently he ceased for a moment and held Claire René's cold hands against his grizzled cheek. "But, my little one, why are you cold?"