We went hurtling through villages and towns we had not seen before.
Our horn and our siren shrieked a warning as we shot through. And it
seemed wrong. They looked so peaceful and so quiet, did those French
towns, on that summer's morning! Peaceful, aye, and languorous, after
all the bustle and haste we had been seeing. The houses were set in
pretty encasements of bright foliage and they looked as though they had
been painted against the background of the landscape with water colors.
It was hard to believe that war had passed that way. It had; there
were traces everywhere of its grim visitation. But here its heavy
hand had been laid lightly upon town and village. It was as if a wave
of poison gas of the sort the Germans brought into war had been
turned aside by a friendly breeze, arising in the very nick of time.
Little harm had been done along the road we traveled. But the thunder
of the guns was always in our ears; we could hear the steady,
throbbing rhythm of the cannon, muttering away to the north and east.
It was very warm, and so, after a time, as we passed through a
village, someone--Hogge, I think--suggested that a bottle of ginger
beer all around would not be amiss. The idea seemed to be regarded as
an excellent one, so Godfrey spoke to the chauffeur beside him, and
we stopped. We had not known, at first, that there were troops in
town. But there were--Highlanders. And they came swarming out.
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