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384 for a surprise for Mlle. Olive when she returned. She was down in the town now, visiting the sick people. He bent over his canvas again, measuring and cutting with a pair of garden shears, moving round the green plot on his knees, and all the time singing. Claude wished he could understand the words of his song.

While they were working together, tying the cloth up to the frame, Claude, from his elevation, saw a tall girl coming slowly up the path by which he had ascended. She paused at the top, by the boxwood hedge, as if she were very tired, and stood looking at them. Presently she approached the ladder and said in slow, careful English, “Good morning. Louis has found help, I see.”

Claude came down from his perch.

“Are you Mlle. de Courcy? I am Claude Wheeler. I have a note of introduction to you, if I can find it.”

She took the card, but did not look at it. “That is not necessary. Your uniform is enough. Why have you come?”

He looked at her in some confusion. “Well, really, I don’t know! I am just in from the front to see Colonel James, and he is in Paris, so I must wait over a day. One of the staff suggested my coming up here—I suppose because it is so nice!” he finished ingenuously.

“Then you are a guest from the front, and you will have lunch with Louis and me. Madame Barré is also gone for the day. Will you see our house?” She led him through the low door into a living room, unpainted, uncarpeted, light and airy. There were coloured war posters on the clean board walls, brass shell-cases full of wild flowers and garden flowers, canvas camp-chairs, a shelf of books, a table covered by a white silk shawl embroidered with big butterflies. The