We saw the skilled embroiderers embroidering,
and the unskilled making sandbags for the trenches; we saw the schools;
and the big girls at work upon trousseaux for their future, or happily
cooking in the kitchens. We saw the gardens where the refugees tended
their own growing fruit and vegetables. We saw the church--once a
gymnasium--and an immense cinema theatre, decorated by the ladies of
Nancy, with the Prefet's wife and daughters at their head. On the way
home we dropped into the biggest of Nancy's beautiful shops, to behold
the work of last night's bombs. The whole skylight-roof had been smashed
at dawn; but the glass had been swept away, and pretty girls were
selling pretty hats and frocks as if nothing had happened--except that
the wind of heaven was blowing their hair across their smiling eyes.
After luncheon at which Dierdre O'Farrell didn't appear, the Prefet took
us to the streets which had suffered most from the big gun
bombardment--fine old houses destroyed with a completeness of which the
wickedest aeroplane bombs are incapable. "Any minute they may begin
again," the Prefet said. "But sufficient for the day! We suffered so
much in a few hours three years ago, that nothing which has happened to
us since has counted. Nancy was saved for us, to have and hold. Wounded
she might be, and we also. But she was saved. We could bear the rest."
We made him tell us about those "few hours" of suffering: and this was
the story.
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