"Come and play to us again," said Madame.
"If I come back," said the boy.
He did not come back along the road through Ypres to Cassel.
From the balcony one could see the nightbirds fly. On every moonlight
night German raiders were about bombing our camps and villages. One
could see just below the hill how the bombs crashed into St.-Marie
Capelle and many hamlets where British soldiers lay, and where
peasants and children were killed with them. For some strange reason
Cassel itself was never bombed.
"We are a nest of spies," said some of the inhabitants, but others had
faith in a miraculous statue, and still others in Sir Herbert Plumer.
Once when a big shell burst very close I looked at Mademoiselle
Suzanne behind the desk. She did not show fear by the flicker of an
eyelid, though officers in the room were startled.
"Vous n'avez pas peur, meme de la mort?" ("You are not afraid, even of
death?") I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Je m'en fiche de la mort!" ("I don't care a damn for death!")
The Hotel du Sauvage was a pleasant rendezvous, but barred for a time
to young gentlemen of the air force, who lingered too long there
sometimes and were noisy.
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