but beautiful towns, of an importance! Luneville, and Gerbevillers, and
more--many more. You should know what they are like before you go on to
the Grande Couronne, where Nancy was saved in 1914."

Of course the Becketts "wished." Of course they had time. "Molly, tell
Mr. and Mrs. Prefet we've got more time than anything else!" said the
old man eagerly. "Oh, and I guess we've got a little money, too, enough
to spread around among those other places, as well as here. This is
going to be something like what Jim would want at last!"

When the Prefet and his wife rose to go, they invited not only the
Becketts but Brian and me to dine at their house that night. Mother
Beckett, on the point of accepting for us all, hesitated. The hesitation
had to be explained: and the explanation was--the O'Farrells. I had
hoped we might be spared them, but it was not to be. Our host and
hostess, hearing of the travellers of the Red Cross, insisted that they
must come, too. Mrs. Beckett was sure they would both be charmed, but as
it turned out, she was only half right. Mr. O'Farrell was charmed. His
sister had a headache, and intended to spend the evening in her room.

Padre, if I wrote stories, I should like to write one with that prefet
and his whole family for the heroes and heroines of it!

There is a small son. There are five daughters, each prettier than the
others, the youngest a tiny _filette_, the eldest twenty at most; and
the mother in looks an elder sister. When the war broke out they were
living in Paris, the father in some high political post: but he was by
ancestry a man of Lorraine, and his first thought was to help defend the
home of his forbears. The Meurthe-et-Moselle, with Nancy as its centre
and capital, was a terrible danger zone, with the sword of the enemy
pointed at its heart, but the lover of Lorraine asked to become prefet
in place of a man about to leave, and his family rallied round him.
There at Nancy, they have been ever since those days, through all the
bombardments by Big Berthas and Taubes. When houses and hotels were
being blown to bits by naval guns, thirty-five kilometres away, the
daily life of the family went on as if in peace. As a man, the Prefet
longed to send his wife and children far away. As a servant of France he
thought best to let them stop, to "set an example of calmness." And if
they had been bidden to go, they would still have stayed.

The Prefet's house is one of the eighteenth-century