g-room in common
with their guest.

Vivie looking out of the windows occasionally, as they passed from
room to room, saw the remainder of the soldiery strolling off to be
lodged at their nearest neighbour's, the farmer who had driven them
in to Brussels that morning. There were perhaps thirty, accompanying
a young lieutenant. How would he find room for them, poor man? They
were more fortunate in being asked only to lodge six or seven in
addition to the Colonel's orderly and soldier-clerk. Before sunset,
the Villa Beau-sejour was clear of soldiers, except the few that had
gone to the barn and the outhouses. The morning room had been fitted
up with a typewriter at which the military clerk sat tapping. The
Colonel's personal luggage had been placed in his bedroom. A soldier
was even sweeping up all traces of the invasion of armed men and
making everything tidy. It all seemed like a horrid dream that was
going to end up happily after all. Presently Vivie would wake up
completely and there would even be no Oberst, no orderly; only the
peaceful life of the farm that was going on yesterday. Here a sound
of angry voices interrupted her musings. The cows returning by
themselves from the pasture were being intercepted by soldiers who
were trying to secure them. Vivie in her indignation ran out and
ordered the soldiers off, in English. To her surprise they obeyed
silently, but as they sauntered away to their quarters she was
saddened at seeing them carrying the bodies of most of the turkeys
and fowls and even the corpse of the poor tailless peacock. They had
waited for sundown to rob the hen-roosts.

Very much disillusioned she ran to the morning room and burst in on
the Colonel's dictation to his clerk. "Excuse me, but if you don't
keep your soldiers in better order you will have very little to eat
whilst you are here. They are killing and carrying off all our
poultry."

The Colonel flushed a little at the peremptory way in which she
spoke, but without replying went out and shouted a lot of orders in
German. His orderly summoned soldiers from the barn and together
they drove the cows into the cow-sheds. All the Flemish servants
having disappeared in a panic, the Germans had to milk the cows that
evening; and Vivie, assisted by the orderly, cooked the evening
meal in the kitchen. He was, like his Colonel, a Saxon, a
pleasant-featured, domesticated man, who explained civilly in the
Thuringian dialect--though to Vivie there cou