For vermicelli, however, it will still be necessary to go to Italy.
OUR NATIONAL GUESTS.
III.
To the list of things that the Belgians in Crashie Howe do not understand, along with oatmeal, honey in the comb, and tapioca, must now be added the Scottish climate. They do not complain, but they are puzzled, and after sixty-five consecutive hours of rain they wonder wistfully if it is always like this. We simply dare not tell them the truth.
By every post we are busy hunting for lost relatives who are scattered before the shattering fist of the Kaiser over Great Britain, Belgium, Holland and France. We have not been very successful so far, but one or two we have found, at points as far apart as York and Milford Haven, and, best of all, we have unearthed a great-grandmother, last seen in an open coal boat off Ostend, who is now in comfortable quarters in a village in Ayrshire.
Our language difficulties have not been assisted by the arrival of a family from Antwerp who talk nothing but Walloon, but, on the other hand, the progress of the children is now beginning to afford certain frail lines of communication. The least of them, Élise, can already count up to twenty in English (with a strong Scoto-Flemish accent), and so it came about that when I took my little nieces round to pay calls, relations were at once established on a numerical basis.
"One, two, three," said Sheila, holding out her hand.
"Four," retorted Juliette, gurgling with delight.