ella to cover them both, for the
winter was hard and snowy, and carriages cost money, which must now be
kept entirely for the almost daily replenishment of the bag and other
calls of war. The girl, to her chagrin, was always left in a safe place,
for it would never do to take her in and put fancies into her head, and
perhaps excite the dear soldiers with a view of anything so taking. And
when the visit was over they would set forth home, walking very slowly
in the high, narrow streets, Augustine pouting a little and shooting
swift glances at anything in uniform, and _Madame_ making firm her lips
against a fatigue which sometimes almost overcame her before she could
get home and up the stairs. And the parrot would greet them indiscreetly
with new phrases--"Keep smiling!" and "Kiss Augustine!" which he
sometimes varied with "Kiss a poll, Poll!" or "Scratch Augustine!" to
_Madame's_ regret. Tea would revive her somewhat, and then she would
knit, for as time went on and the war seemed to get farther and farther
from that end which, in common with so many, she had expected before
now, it seemed dreadful not to be always doing something to help the
poor dear soldiers; and for dinner, to Augustine's horror, she now had
nothing but a little soup, or an egg beaten up with milk and brandy. It
saved such a lot of time and expense--she was sure people ate too much;
and afterwards she would read the _Daily Mail_, often putting it down to
sigh, and press her lips together, and think, "One must look on the
bright side of things," and wonder a little where it was. And
Augustine, finishing her work in the tiny kitchen, would sigh too, and
think of red trousers and peaked caps, not yet out of date in that
Southern region, and of her own heart saying "Kiss Augustine!" and she
would peer out between the shutters at the stars sparkling over the
Camargue, or look down where the ground fell away beyond an old, old
wall, and nobody walked in the winter night, and muse on her nineteenth
birthday coming, and sigh with the thought that she would be old before
any one had loved her; and of how _Madame_ was looking "_tres
fatiguee_."

Indeed, Madame was not merely _looking "tres fatiguee"_ in these days.
The world's vitality and her own were at sad January ebb. But to think
of oneself was quite impossible, of course; it would be all right
presently, and one must not fuss, or mention in one's letters to the
dear children that one felt at all poorly.