Where the Sabots Clatter Again by Katherine Shortall
page 5 of 23 (21%)
page 5 of 23 (21%)
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For now she was alone. Tennis tournaments for her were separated from
the present by a curtain of deaths, by the incomparable space of those four years. Mademoiselle Gaston had played her part in it all. When the Germans were advancing upon Noyon, she had stuck to her post and remained in the hospital where she nursed her compatriots under enemy rule during the first occupation of the city. Something about her had made them treat her with respect, although I have been told that the Prussian officers were always vaguely uncomfortable in her presence. There was, perhaps, not enough humility in her clear eyes, and they worked her to the breaking point. Yet so impeccable and businesslike was her conduct that they could never convict her of any infringement of rules. Little did these pompous invaders suspect how this slender capable girl with the hazel eyes was spicing the hours behind their backs, and drawing with nimble and irreverent pencil portraits of her captors, daring caricatures which she exhibited in secret to the terrified delight of her patients. Luckily for her this harmless vengeance had not been discovered, for doubtless she would have paid dearly for her Gallic audacity. She was small of stature and very thin. Not even the nurse's flowing garb could conceal the angularity of her figure. One wondered how so fragile a frame could have survived the crashings and shakings of war. What secret of yielding and resisting was hers? The tension, nevertheless, had left its mark upon her young face; had drawn the skin over the aquiline profile, and compressed the sensitive mouth in a line too rigid for her years. This severity of feature she aggravated by pinning her _coiffe_ low over a forehead as uncompromising as a nun's. Not a relenting suggestion of hair would she permit. Yet whatever of |
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