A group of women stood within, their faces turned towards the door as
she entered.

"Fanny...."

"What is it?"

"We are going to Metz! We are ordered to Metz!" Stewart waved a letter.

Was poverty and solitude at an end? They did not know it. In leaving the
Meuse district did they leave, too, the boundless rain, the swollen
rivers, the shining swamps, the mud which ebbed and flowed upon the land
like a tide? Was hunger at an end, discomfort, and poor living? They had
no inkling.

Fanny, indifferent to any change, hoping for nothing better, turned
first to the meat tin, for she was hungry.

"Metz is a town," she hazarded.

"Of course!"

"There will be things to eat there?"

"No, very little. It was fed from Germany; now that it is suddenly fed
from Paris the service is disorganised. One train crosses the devastated
land in the day. I hear all this from the brigadier--who has, for that
matter, never been there."