ains were
spotlessly white and the bed linen smelled sweet from having been dried
in the open air.

A most appreciable surprise was the excellent _cuisine_, and as
ornament to the dining-room table, between a pair of tall preserve
dishes, and on either side of the central bouquet, stood an unexploded
German shell. One of them had fallen on to the proprietor's bed, the
second landing in the pantry, while twenty or thirty others had worked
more efficiently, as could be attested by the ruins of the carriage
house, stables, and what had once been a glass covered Winter garden.

On a door leading out of the office, and curiously enough left intact,
one might read, _Salon de conversation_. If you were to attempt to
cross the threshold, however, your eye would be instantly greeted by a
most abominable heap of plaster and wreckage, and the jovial proprietor
seeing your embarrassment, would explain:

"My wife and the servants are all for cleaning up, but to my mind it's
better to leave things just as they are. Besides if we put all to
rights now, when our patrons return they will never credit half we tell
them. Seeing is believing! At any rate, it's an out of the way place,
and isn't bothering people for the time being."

And truly enough this mania for repairing and reconstructing, this
instinct of the active ant that immediately commences to rebuild its
hill, obliterated by some careless foot, has become as characteristic
of the French.

The Sisters of St. Thomas de Villeneuve, who were in charge of an
immense hospital, had two old masons who might be seen at all times,
trowel in hand, patching up the slightest damage to their buildings;
the local manager of a Dufayel store had become almost a fanatic on the
subject. His stock in trade consisted of furniture, china and crockery
of all kinds, housed beneath a glass roof, which seemed to attract the
Boches' special attention, for during the four years of war just past,
I believe that scarcely a week elapsed during which he was not directly
or indirectly the victim of their fire.

The effects were most disastrous, but aided by his wife and an elderly
man who had remained in their employ, he would patiently recommence
scrubbing, sweeping and cleaning, carefully reinstating each object or
fragment thereof, in or as near as possible to its accustomed place.

It was nothing less than miraculous to survey those long lines of
wardrobes that seemed to hold together by the