Paul had cleaned and fitted the stove in Manon’s kitchen, and she did her cooking there while Paul went out to try the saw. He had contrived a carpenter’s bench in the front room on the other side of the passage, using boxes and the floor boards from one of the huts. There were some two by four battens to be worked up into a door-frame, and Brent squared the ends off with the new saw.
“It cuts like butter,” he called to Manon.
“Butter! Oh, mon ami, have you any butter left? I have forgotten to bring some.”
“Yes, quite a good-sized pat.”
“Thank God! How near we were to a tragedy.”
Half an hour later they sat down in the kitchen to that second breakfast. Manon had taken off her shoes in order to rest her feet, and she told an heroic lie when Brent accused her of having blistered them in walking from Ste. Claire. The omelette was excellent, golden food for the gods, and so was the French bread after a season of army biscuits and ration jam.
Manon Latour found herself looking at Paul as many a savage woman must have looked at the man whom she had chosen for a partner. Strength might matter in Beaucourt, and Paul Brent looked strong. He had a good chest and shoulders, and a squarish and intelligent head well set on a sinewy neck. She had seen him with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and remembered noticing how big and powerful his arms were. She knew that Paul was not the man who would fight for the mere love of fighting. There was too little of the animal about him for such savagery. Moreover, he was too good-tempered, though when a good-tempered man gets angry, the fire is all the more to be feared.
“All Englishmen can box; is not that so, mon ami?”
Paul was drinking his third cup of coffee. He set the cup down and stared at Manon.
“No. Why?”