The Girl Philippa. Chambers Robert William

took a highway to the left, narrow and tree-shaded.

      "When do you get the newspapers here?" inquired Halkett.

      "After lunch, usually. The Petit Journal d'Ausonearrives then. Nobody bothers with any Paris papers. But I think I shall subscribe, now… There's the school, just ahead."

      It was a modern and very plain two-storied building of stone and white stucco, covered with new red tiles. A few youthful vines were beginning to climb gratefully toward the lower window sills; young linden trees shaded it. A hum, like the low, incessant murmur of a hive, warned them as they approached that the children were reciting in unison; and they halted at the open door.

      Inside the big, clean room, the furniture of which was a stove and a score or more of desks, two dozen little girls, neatly but very poorly dressed, stood beside their desks reciting. On a larger desk stood a glass full of flowers which Halkett recognized; and beside this desk, slenderly erect, he saw Sister Eila, facing the children, her white hands linked behind her back.

      Seated behind the same desk was another Sister – a buxom one with the bright, clear coloring of a healthy peasant – more brilliant, even, for the white wimple, collarette, and wide-winged headdress which seemed to accent the almost riotous tint of physical health.

      The childish singsong presently ceased; Sister Eila turned pensively, took a step or two, lifted her eyes, and beheld Halkett and Warner at the doorway.

      "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Please come in, Messieurs. I have been wondering whether Mr. Warner would bring you before luncheon… Sister Félicité, this is Monsieur Halkett, who so amiably aided me to gather my bouquet this morning."

      Sister Félicité became all animation and vigor; she was cordial to Halkett, greeted Warner with the smiling confidence of long acquaintance.

      It lacked only a few minutes to noon, and so lessons were suspended, and the children put through one or two drills for Halkett's benefit.

      Out in the kitchen a good, nourishing broth was simmering for them, and Sister Eila slipped away during the brief exhibition to prepare twenty-four bowls and spoons and tartines for these ever-hungry little children of the poor, orphaned for the most part, or deserted, or having parents too poor to feed them.

      At noon Sister Félicité dismissed the school; and the little girls formed in line very demurely and filed off to the kitchen.

      "What a delicious odor!" exclaimed Halkett, nose in the air.

      Sister Félicité sniffed the soup.

      "We do our best," she said. "The poor little things fatten here, God be praised." And, to Warner, in her vigorous, alert manner: "What is all this talk concerning war? The children prattle about it. They must have heard such gossip among the quarry people."

      Warner said:

      "It begins to look rather serious, Sister."

      "Is it Germany again?"

      "I fear so."

      Sister Félicité's pink cheeks flushed:

      "Is it the noisy boaster who rules those Germans who would bring the sword upon us again? Is there not enough of barbaric glory in his Empire for him and his that he should invade the civilized world to seek for more? It is a vile thing for any man, be he ruler or subject, to add one featherweight to the crushing burden of the world's misery!"

      "To declare war is the heaviest of all responsibilities," admitted Warner.

      "Is it already declared?"

      "No. That is to say, Austria has declared war against Servia, Russia is mobilizing, and Germany has warned her."

      "Is that an excuse for anybody to attack France?"

      "Russia is mobilizing, Sister," he repeated meaningly.

      "What then?"

      "France must follow."

      "And then?"

      Warner shrugged his shoulders.

      Sister Eila came out, nodding to Sister Félicité, who usually presided at the lunch hour: and the latter went away with Warner toward the kitchen, still plying the American with questions. Sister Eila bent her head, inhaled the perfume of the flowers on her desk, and then looked up at Halkett.

      "Don't you ever lunch?" he asked.

      "Yes; I tasted the soup. You lunch at one at the inn."

      "I suppose so. What a charming country this is – this little hamlet of Saïs! Such exquisite peace and stillness I have seldom known."

      Sister Eila's eyes grew vague; she looked out through the sunny doorway across the fields towards a range of low hills. The quarries were there.

      "It is a tranquil country," she said pensively, "but there is misery, too. Life in the quarries is hard, and wages are not high."

      "Mr. Warner tells me they are a hard lot, these quarrymen."

      "There is intemperance among the quarrymen, and among the cement workers, too: and there is roughness and violence – and crime, sometimes. But it is a very hard métier, Mr. Halkett, and the lime dust blinds and sears and incites a raging thirst. God knows there is some excuse for the drunkenness there. We who are untempted must remain gentle in our judgments."

      "I could not imagine Sister Eila judging anybody harshly."

      Sister Eila looked up and laughed:

      "Oh, Mr. Halkett, I have confessed to impatience too many times to believe that I could ever acquire patience. Only today I scolded our children because they tore down a poster which had been pasted on the public wall at the crossroad. I said to them very severely, 'It is a sin to destroy what others have paid for to advertise their merchandise.'"

      "That was a terrible scolding," admitted Halkett, laughing.

      "I'll show you the poster," volunteered Sister Eila, going over to her desk. Raising the lid, she picked up and displayed an advertisement.

      CHAPTER VIII

      Halkett looked curiously at this specimen of a poster which was already very familiar to him. The dead walls of northern and eastern France and Belgium had been plastered with such advertisements for the last year or two, extolling the Savon de Calypso. But what had recently interested Halkett in these soap advertisements was that posters, apparently exactly similar, appeared to differ considerably in detail when examined minutely.

      The picture in this advertisement represented, as always, the nymph, Calypso, seated upon the grass, looking out over the sea where the sun shone in a cloudless sky upon a fleet of Grecian ships which were sailing away across the blue waves of the Ægean.

      Where details varied was in the number of ships in the fleet, the number and grouping of sails, sea birds flying, of waves, and of clouds – when there were any of the latter – the number of little white or blue or pink blossoms in the grass, the height of the sun above the horizon line and the number and size of its rays.

      There was always at least one ship – never more than a dozen; he had counted twenty white blossoms on some posters; varying numbers on others, of white, of blue, or of pink, but never less than three of any one color. Sometimes there were no sea birds.

      As for the sun, sometimes it hung well above the ocean, often its yellow circle dipped into it, and then again only the rays spread fanlike above the horizon line.

      And concerning the nymph, her pose and costume did not seem to vary at all in the various poster specimens which he had seen; the wind was always blowing her red hair and white, transparent scarf; she always sat gazing laughingly seaward, one hand resting on the grass, the other clutching a cake of soap to her bosom.

      Still examining the sheet of paper, he counted the white flowers scattered over the grass around the seated nymph. There were ten of them.

      "Sister Eila," he said carelessly, "how many kilometers is it to the next town south of us? I mean by the military road."

      "To Rosières-sous-Bois?"

      "Yes."

      "About