the walls. I wished that, instead of one girl, I had
been a dozen! But I did my best and so did Mother Beckett, who
brightened into a charming second youth, the youth of a happy mother
surrounded by a band of sons.

The lumps that had been in our throats had to be choked sternly down,
for not to do justice to that meal would be worse than leaving the rouge
and powder boxes unopened! The menu need not have put a palace to shame.
In the citadel of Verdun it seemed as if it must have been evolved by
rubbing Aladdin's lamp, and I said so as I read it over:

Huitres d'Ostende
Bisque d'Ecrevisses
Sanglier roti
Puree de Pommes de Terre
Soufflee de Chocolat
Fruits
Bonbons

"Oh, we've never been hungry at Verdun, even when things were at their
liveliest," said the officer sitting next to me. "Providence provided
for us in a strange way. I will tell you how. Before the civil
population went away, or expected to go, there was talk of a long siege.
The shopkeepers thought they would be intelligent and sent to Paris for
all sorts of food. Oh, not only the grocers and butchers! Everyone. You
would have laughed to see the jewellers showing hams in their windows
instead of diamonds and pearls and gold purses, and the piles of
preserved meat and fruit tins at the perfumers! The confectioners
ordered stores of sugar and the wine merchants restocked their cellars.
Then things began to happen. Houses were bombed, and people hustled out
in a hurry. You have seen some of those houses! The place was getting
too hot; and the order came for evacuation. Not much could be taken
away. Transport was difficult in those days! All the good food had to
be left behind, and we thought it would be a pity to waste it. Our chief
bought the lot at a reasonable price--merchants were thankful to sell.
So you see we did not need Aladdin's lamp."

"I don't _quite_ see!" I confessed. "Because, that's a long time ago,
and these oysters of Ostende----"

"Never saw Ostende!" he laughed. "They are a big bluff! We always have
them when"--he bowed--"we entertain distinguished guests. The Germans
used to print in their papers that we at Verdun could not hold out long,
because we were eating rats. So we took to cutting a dash with our
menus. We do not go into particulars and say that our oysters have kept
themselves fresh in tins!"

"But the wild boar?" I persisted. "Does one tin wild boar?"

"One does not! One goes out and