pink ribbons to my carrier. She gravely assented, sat on my knee, told
me I was very dirty, and commanded me to kill heaps and heaps of
Germans. She didn't like them; they had beards!

You know those fierce middle-aged Frenchwomen of the _bourgeois_ class,
hard as Scotsmen, close as Jews, and with feelings about as fine as
those of a motor-bus. She was one of them, and she was the foremost of a
largish crowd that collected round me. With her was a pretty girl of
about twenty-two.

The mother began with a rhetorical outburst against all Germans,
anathematising in particular those who had spent the last fortnight in
Coulommiers, in which town her uncle had set up his business, which,
though it had proved successful, as they all knew, &c., &c. The crowd
murmured that they did all know. Then the old harridan chanted the
wrongs which the Germans had wrought until, when she had worked the
crowd and herself up to a heat of furious excitement, she lowered her
voice, suddenly lowered her tone. In a grating whisper she narrated, in
more detail than I cared to hear, the full story of how her daughter--to
whom she pointed--had been shamefully treated by the Germans. The crowd
growled. The daughter was, I think, more pleased at being the object of
my sympathy and the centre of the crowd's interest than agonised at the
remembrance of her misfortune.

Some of the company coming up saved me from the recital of further
outrages. The hag told them of a house where the Germans had left a
rifle or two and some of our messages which they had intercepted. The
girl hesitated a moment, and then followed. I started hastily to go on,
but the girl, hearing the noise of my engine, ran back to bid me an
unembarrassed farewell.