It was not much after nine when two English officers strolled down the road--Captain Edwards and Major Ellison, of the Bedfordshire Light Infantry. They came into the garden, and the scene with Captain Simpson of the day before was practically repeated. They examined the plain, located the towns, looked long at it with their glasses; and that being over I put the usual question, "Can I do anything for you?" and got the usual answer, "Eggs." I asked how many officers there were in the mess, and he replied "Five"; so I promised to forage, and away they went. As soon as they were out of sight the picket set up a howl for baths. These Bedfordshire boys were not hungry, but they had retreated from their last battle leaving their kits in the trenches, and were without soap or towels, or combs or razors. But that was easily remedied. They washed up in relays in the court at Amelie's--it was a little more retired. As Amelie had put all her towels, etc., down underground, I ran back and forward between my house and hers for all sorts of things, and, as they slopped until the road ran tiny rivulets, I had to change shoes and stockings twice. I was not conscious till afterward how funny it all was. I must have been a good deal like an excited duck, and Amelie like a hen with a duckling. When she was not twitching my sash straight, she was running about after me with dry shoes and stockings, and a chair, for fear "madame was getting too tired"; and when she was not doing that she was clapping my big garden hat on my head, for fear "madame would get a sunstroke." The joke was that I did not know it was hot. I did not even know it was funny until afterward, when the whole scene seemed to have been by a sort of dual process photographed unconsciously on my memory. When the boys were all washed and shaved and combed,--and they were so larky over it,--we were like old friends. I did not know one of them by name, but I did know who was married, and who had children; and how one man's first child had been born since he left England, and no news from home because they had seen their mail wagon burn on the battlefield; and how one of them was only twenty, and had been six years in the army,--lied when he enlisted; how none of them had ever seen war before; how they had always wanted to, and "Now," said the twenty-years older, "I've seen it--good Lord--and all I want is to get home," and he drew out of his breast pocket a photograph of a young girl in all her best clothes, sitting up very straight. When I said, "Best girl?" he said proudly, "Only one, and we were to have been married in January if this hadn't happened. Perhaps we may yet, if we get home at Christmas, as they tell us we may." I wondered who he meant by "they." The officers did not give any such impression. While I was gathering up towels and things before returning to the house, this youngster advanced toward me, and said with a half-shy smile, "I take it you're a lady."