Warum küssen sich die Menschen?
Warum meistens nur die Jungen?
Warum diese meist im Frühjahr?…
That evening Mireille opened the door to the postman and took two letters from him. Then she went to the sitting-room where Frieda and Chérie sat at their needlework; hiding one of the letters behind her back she read out the superscription of the other with irritating slowness:
"Mademoiselle—Chérie—Brandès—Villa—Esther—"
"Oh, give it to me!" cried Chérie, extending an impatient hand.
"It is from Loulou," said Mireille, giving up the letter and still holding the other one behind her back.
"You may not call your mother Loulou," snapped Frieda. "I have never heard of such a thing."
"She likes it," said Mireille. "Besides, Chérie calls her Loulou."
"Chérie is her sister-in-law, not her daughter," said Frieda; then catching sight of the other letter in Mireille's hand: "Who is that for?"
"Hochwohlgeborenes Fräulein—Frieda Rothenstein—" read Mireille, and Frieda rose quickly and pulled the letter out of her hand. "Oh, Frieda, you rude thing! Who is your letter from? It's on our letter-paper, and is not from Loulou, and it is not from my father. Who calls you all that twiddly-twaddly hochwohlgeboren nonsense?"
Nobody answered. Both Fräulein and Chérie were reading their letters with intent eyes. Mireille continued her monologue. "I believe it is from Fritz. Fancy! Fritz, who is only papa's servant, writing to you! Do you answer him? Fancy a hochwohlgeboren getting letters from a man-servant!"
Frieda did not deign to reply, nor did she raise her eyes from the letter in her hand; yet as Mireille could see, it was only one line long. Just four or five words. But Frieda sat staring at them as if they had turned her to stone.
Now Chérie had finished reading the hastily scrawled page in her hand and raised a face full of consternation.
"Frieda! Mireille! Do you know what has happened? We are to go home tomorrow."
"Tomorrow!" exclaimed Mireille. "Why, papa said we were to stay here two months, and we only arrived four days ago."
"Well, your mother writes that we are to go home at once. Do you hear, Frieda?" But Frieda did not answer nor raise her eyes.
"But why—why?" cried Mireille. "Doesn't Loulou know we have arranged to have your birthday party here, with Lucile and Jeannette and Cri-cri all coming on purpose?"
"Yes, she knows," said Chérie, turning her sweet, perplexed eyes from Mireille's disconcerted face to the impassive countenance of Frieda, "but she says there is going to be war."
"War? What has that got to do with us?" exclaimed Mireille in injured tones. "It really is too bad. Just as I had made up my mind that tomorrow I would swim with both feet off the ground!…"
CHAPTER II
The next day's sun rose hot and angry. It was the 30th of July. By ten o'clock Frieda had packed everything. Amour had been put into his picnic-basket and his humped-up back coaxed and patted and finally forcibly pressed down, and the lid shut over him. Then they awaited the carriage ordered by telephone from Ostend the night before.
But no carriage arrived. At eleven Chérie ran across to the telephone-office and spoke in her sternest tones to the livery stable in Ostend.
"Eh bien? Is this carriage coming? We ordered it for ten o'clock."
"No, Madame, it is not coming," replied a gruff voice from the other end.
"Not coming?"
"No, Madame." Then in lower, almost confidential tones, "It has been requisitioned."
"What is that? Then send another one," said Chérie. But Ostend had cut off the communication and Chérie returned crestfallen and wondering to the glum Frieda and the doleful Mireille sitting on the trunks in Madame Guillaume's narrow hall.
"No carriage," she said.
"What?" exclaimed Frieda.
"Why not?" asked Mireille.
"I don't know; something is being done to it," Chérie said vaguely. "I did not understand. Perhaps it is being re—re—covered, or something."
At noon Madame Guillaume found a porter for them who wheeled the luggage on a hand-cart to the Westende tramway station. And the tramway carried them and their luggage and Amour in his basket to Ostend, where another man with a hand-cart was found to wheel the luggage and the basket to the railway station.
They noticed at once that Ostend wore a strange and novel air. Crowds filled the town, crowds that were not the customary sauntering demi-mondaines and lounging viveurs. No; the streets were full of hurrying people, of soldiers on foot and on horseback; long lines of motor-cars, motor-cycles, carts and wagons blocked the roadways, and behind them came peasants leading strings of unharnessed horses. Down the rue Albert came, marching rapidly, a little band of Gardes Civiques in their long coats and incongruous bowler-hats with straps under their chins. Groups of officers, who had arrived a few days before for the international tennis tournament, were assembled on the Avenue Leopold and talked together in low, eager tones.
"What is the matter with everybody?" asked Mireille, as they hurried through the Place St. Joseph and across the bridge after the man with the luggage, who was already vanishing into the crowded station.
As if in answer to her question a couple of newspaper boys came rushing past with shrill cries. "Supplément … supplément de 'l'Indépendance' …, Mobilization Générale...."
"Frieda, is there really going to be war?" asked Chérie, looking anxiously at Frieda's sulky profile.
"Yes, I believe so," said Frieda. "Between Russia and Germany."
"Oh well; that is far away," said young Chérie, with a little laugh of relief, and she ran to rescue the picnic-basket from the porter's roughly swinging hand.
"Amour is whining," whispered Mireille, as they stood in the crush waiting to pass the ticket-collector on the quai.
"Oh! he mustn't," said Chérie. "Officially he is sandwiches."
So Mireille thumped the basket with her small gloved hand and murmured, "Couche-toi, tais-toi, vilian scélérat." And the official sandwiches subsided in the basket and were silent.
They never had such a journey. The train was crowded to suffocation; the whole world seemed to be going to Brussels; every few minutes their train stopped to let other even more crowded trains dash past them towards the capital.
"I have never seen so many soldiers," said Mireille. "I did not think there were so many in the world."
Frieda Rothenstein smiled disdainfully with the corners of her mouth turned down. "There are a few more than this in my country," she said.
"What? In Germany? But not such beautiful ones," cried Mireille, hanging out of the window and waving her handkerchief as many others did to a little company of Lancers cantering past on the winding road with lances fixed and pennants fluttering.
Frieda glanced at them superciliously. "You should see our Uhlans," she said. And added under her breath, "Who knows? Perhaps one day you may."
But the girls were not listening. The train was running into Brussels at last. The journey had taken five hours instead of two.
An hour later they still sat in the