"We are not foreigners; we are English; it is you that are foreigners."—An English Lady Abroad.

When Dr. O'Grady and Aurelle had succeeded, with some difficulty, in obtaining a room from old Madame de VauclÈre, Colonel Parker went over to see them and was charmed with the chÂteau and the park.

France and England, he said, were the only two countries in which fine gardens were to be found, and he told the story of the American who asked the secret of those well-mown lawns and was answered, "Nothing is simpler: water them for twelve hundred years."

Then he inquired timidly whether he also might not be quartered at the chÂteau.

"It wouldn't do very well, sir; Madame is mortally afraid of new-comers, and she has a right, being a widow, to refuse to billet you."

"Aurelle, my boy, do be a good fellow, and go and arrange matters."

After much complaining, Madame de VauclÈre consented to put the colonel up: all her sons were officers, and she could not withstand sentimental arguments for very long.

The next day Parker's orderly joined the doctor's in the chÂteau kitchen, and together they annexed the fireplace. To make room for their own utensils, they took down a lot of comical little French articles, removed what they saw no use for, put the kettle on, and whistled hymns as they filled the cupboards with tins of boot polish in scientifically graded rows.

After adoring them on the first day, putting up with them on the second, and cursing them on the third, the old cook came up to Aurelle with many lamentations, and dwelt at some length on the sad state of her saucepans; but she found the interpreter dealing with far more serious problems.

Colonel Parker, suddenly realizing that it was inconvenient for the general to be quartered away from his Staff, had decided to transfer the whole H.Q. to the chÂteau of VauclÈre.

"Explain to the old lady that I want a very good room for the general, and the billiard-room for our clerks."

"Why, it's impossible, sir; she has no good room left."

"What about her own?" said Colonel Parker.

Madame de VauclÈre, heart-broken, but vanquished by the magic word "General," which Aurelle kept on repeating sixty times a minute, tearfully abandoned her canopied bed and her red damask chairs, and took refuge on the second floor.

Meanwhile the drawing-room with its ancient tapestries was filled with an army of phlegmatic clerks occupied in heaping up innumerable cases containing the history in triplicate of the Division, its men, horses, arms and achievements.

"Maps" set up his drawing-board on a couple of arm-chairs; "Intelligence" concealed their secrets in an Aubusson boudoir; and the telephone men sauntered about in the dignified, slow, bantering fashion of the British workman. They set up their wires in the park, and cut branches off the oaks and lime trees; they bored holes in the old walls, and, as they wished to sleep near their work they put up tents on the lawns.

The Staff asked for their horses; and the animals were picketed in the garden walks, as the stables were too small. In the garden the Engineers made a dug-out in case of a possible bombardment. The orderlies' football developed a distinct liking for the window-panes of the summer-house. The park assumed the aspect first of a building site and then of a training camp, and new-comers said, "These French gardens are badly kept!"

This methodical work of destruction had been going on for about a week when "Intelligence" got going.

"Intelligence" was represented at the Division by Captain Forbes.

Forbes, who had never yet arrested a real spy, saw potential spies everywhere, and as he was fond of the company of the great, he always made his suspicions a pretext for going to see General Bramble or Colonel Parker. One day he remained closeted for an hour with the colonel, who summoned Aurelle as soon as he had left.

"Do you know," he said to him, "there are most dangerous things going on here. Two old women are constantly being seen in this chÂteau. What the deuce are they up to?"

"What do you mean?" gasped Aurelle. "This is their house, sir; it's Madame de VauclÈre and her maid."

"Well, you go and tell them from me to clear out as soon as possible. The presence of civilians among a Staff cannot be tolerated; the Intelligence people have complained about it, and they are perfectly right."

"But where are they to go to, sir?"

"That's no concern of mine."

Aurelle turned round furiously and left the room. Coming across Dr. O'Grady in the park, he asked his advice about the matter.

"Why, doctor, she had a perfect right to refuse to billet us, and from a military point of view we should certainly be better off at Nieppe. She was asked to do us a favour, she grants it, and her kindness is taken as a reason for her expulsion! I can't 'evacuate her to the rear,' as Forbes would say; she'd die of it!"

"I should have thought," said the doctor, "that after three years you knew the British temperament better than this. Just go and tell the colonel, politely and firmly, that you refuse to carry out his orders. Then depict Madame de VauclÈre's situation in your grandest and most tragic manner. Tell him her family has been living in the chÂteau for the last two thousand years, that one of her ancestors came over to England with William the Conqueror, and that her grandfather was a friend of Queen Victoria's. Then the colonel will apologize and place a whole wing at the disposal of your protÉgÉe."

Dr. O'Grady's prescription was carried out in detail by Aurelle with most satisfactory results.

"You are right," said the colonel, "Forbes is a damned idiot. The old lady can stay on, and if anybody annoys her, let her come to me."

"It's all these servants who are such a nuisance to her, sir," said Aurelle. "It's very painful for her to see her own house turned upside-down."

"Upside-down?" gasped the colonel. "Why, the house is far better kept than it was in her time. I have had the water in the cisterns analysed; I have had sweet-peas planted and the tennis lawn rolled. What can she complain of?"

In the well-appointed kitchen garden, where stout-limbed pear trees bordered square beds of sprouting lettuce, Aurelle joined O'Grady.

"Doctor, you're a great man, and my old lady is saved. But it appears she ought to thank her lucky stars for having placed her under the British Protectorate, which, in exchange for her freedom, provides her with a faultless tennis lawn and microbeless water."

"There is nothing," said the doctor gravely, "that the British Government is not ready to do for the good of the natives."