Page:Wounded Souls.djvu/30

 "I will go with you, if you permit it, mademoiselle. It is perhaps in a little way my duty, as I met your father in the war."

"Thanks a thousand times," said the girl. "Maman will be glad to know all you can tell her."

She waved to Brand a merry au revoir.

We stood watching them cross the Grande Place, that tall girl and the two little ones, and Pierre.

Fortune touched Brand on the arm.

"Plucky, that girl," he said. "Took it without a whimper. I wonder if she cared."

Brand turned on him rather savagely.

"Cared? Of course she cared. But she had expected it for four years, grown up to the idea. These war children have no illusions about the business. They knew that the odds are in favour of death."

He raised his hands above his head with a sudden passionate gesture.

"Christ God!" he said. "The tragedy of those people! The monstrous cruelty of it all!"

Fortune took his hand and patted it, in a funny affectionate way.

"You are too sensitive, Wicky. 'A sensitive plant in a garden grew'—a war-garden, with its walls blown down, and dead bodies among the little daisies-o. I try to cultivate a sense of humour, and a little irony. It's a funny old war, Wicky, believe me, if you look at it in the right light."

Wickham groaned.

"I see no humour in it, nor light anywhere."

Fortune chanted again the beginning of his Anthem:

"Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche."

As usual, there was a crowd about us, smiling, waving