Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3829/Our National Guests
The truth is that the Belgians in Crashie Howe are enjoying a succès fou. There is the enterprising Marie, who thinks nothing of going off on her own, on the strength of an English vocabulary only a fortnight old, overwhelming the stationmaster and boarding an ambulance train full of wounded Belgians at the local station to ask for news of her brothers. (We were all delighted when an adventurous letter miraculously arrived from the Pas de Calais on Saturday and reported that both brothers were well and unwounded.) There is Victor, who, although only thirteen, is already a pupille d'armée and has a uniform quite as good as any fighting man. I can tell you he has put our Boy Scouts in the shade. But Victor is afraid the war will be over before he is old enough to get at it.
Then, again, there is the small Juliette, who is dark, with a comfortable little face constructed almost entirely of dimples, and, at the age of eight, has been discovered knitting stockings at a prodigious pace while she looked the other way. I am afraid Juliette is being held up as an example to other children of the neighbourhood, but I think her great popularity may well survive even that. And there is Louis, who is a marvel at making bird-cages, and Rosalie, whose pride is in the shine of her pots and pans. They are all doing well.
Rosalie, it is true, has had a fearful bout of toothache, so bad that she had to retire to bed for a day. When Dr. Anderson, whose French is very good, had successfully diagnosed the trouble and told her that the only cure was to have the tooth out, she plaintively replied that she had thought of that herself, but, alas, it was impossible, for "it was too firmly implanted." For my part I sympathised with Rosalie—I have often felt like that.
The grandmother rather likes to sit apart, beaming, far from the general throng, and it was for that reason that I selected her at the very outset to practise on in private. I tried her more than once in my sadly broken French; I even went further and tried her in rapidly-improvised Flemish. Whenever I felt I was at my best I used to go and have a turn at her, and, although she smiled at me like anything and was awfully pleased, I never elicited the slightest response. Now I know that she is almost stone deaf and hasn't heard a word I have said. As I came sadly away after this discovery there occurred to my mind the story of him who undertook to train a savage in the arts of civilization, only to learn, after some years of disappointing, unrequited toil, that his victim was not only a savage but also a lunatic. I don't mean that to be disrespectful to Grandmère—it is only a parallel instance of good work thrown away.
We are learning a good deal that is new about the art of knitting. One thing is that the Flemish knitter cannot get on at all comfortably unless the needles are long enough to tuck under her arms. I may safely say that I never dreamt of that. At first they fumbled about unhappily with our miserable little needles, but the ship's carpenter—who makes the bird-cages—has found quite an ingenious way out. He has mounted all the needles at the end of a sort of stilt or leg of cane (like a bayonet), and since this innovation they are working at a speed which, even in these days of universal knitting, would be pretty hard to beat.
The children are really getting on famously at school. A very touching little romance was enacted there one day. Eugène and Pierre, belonging to different families, arrived in our midst on different days and did not chance to meet each other at first. At school they happened to be put, away from their compatriots, in the same room. Eugene is eight and Pierre seven. It was, you may well guess, pretty lonely work for a small Belgian in a roomful of Scotch boys, but both bore up bravely. The subject, as I understand, was simple addition (which knows no frontiers and looks the same in any language), and there is no whispering or secret conversation in our school, I can tell you. There they sat side by side for two hours, each contemplating the other as an alien, each smothering pent-up feelings of home-sickness. And then suddenly, at a single Flemish word from the schoolmaster, the moment of revelation came; it dawned on both of them at once that they were not alone, and, rising to their feet, they embraced with tears of joy.
"Broeder!" cried Eugène.
"Broeder!" echoed Pierre.
That was nearly a week ago. By now Pierre is beginning to treat Eugène in a slightly off-hand manner. He has hardly time for him. He has so many Scotch friends.