Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/131

 and I remember feeling the injustice of our equal rank, as I set his years of privation and hardship against my few weeks in a training camp.

He was very glad to see me, and the very first night he made me a Brunswick stew. This time there were no squirrels, but he begged young rabbits from the old couple who had once been servants in the château where we were billeted. They had trudged back at once on the retirement of the Boches, and were making the best of the changed conditions.

There was, of course, no chafing-dish, and the stew was cooked in an iron pot which hung over an open fire in the ancient kitchen. Before they sold the rabbits the old people had made one condition:

"If we may have a bit for mademoiselle?"

"For mademoiselle?"

"She is here with us, monsieur. She had not been well. We have been saving the rabbits for her."

Randolph made the grand gesture that I so well remembered.

"My good people—if she would dine with us?"

The old woman shook her head. She was not sure. She would see.

Perhaps she said pleasant things of us, per- 125