They leant from the ambulance excitedly as the lights of the streets
flashed past them, saw windows piled with pale bricks of butter, bars of
chocolates, tins of preserved strawberries, and jams.
"Can you see the price on the butter?"
"Twenty-four...."
"What?"
"I can't see. Yes.... Twenty-four francs a pound."
"Good heavens!"
"Ah, is it possible, eclairs?"
"Eclairs!"
And with exclamations of awe they saw the cake shops in the Serpenoise.
German boys cried "American girls! American girls!" and threw paper
balls into the back of the ambulance.
"I heard, I heard...."
"What is it?"
"I heard German spoken."
"Did you think, then, they were all dead?"
"No," but Fanny felt like some old scholar who hears a dead language
spoken in a vanished town.
They drove on past the Cathedral into the open square of the Place du
Theatre. Half the old French theatre had been set aside as offices for
the Automobile Service, and now the officers of the service, who had
waited for them with curiosity, greeted them on the steps.
"You must be tired, you must be hungry! Leave the ambulance where it is
and come now, as you are, to dine with us!"
In the uncertain light from the lamp on the theatre steps the French
tried to see the English faces, the women glanced at the men, and they
walked together to the oak-panelled Mess Room in a house on the other
side of the empty square.
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