Madame was the most tender-hearted woman I have ever met. She loved all living things, even an atrocious little dog called Fifi, half blind, wholly deaf, and given to wheezing horribly. Only once did I see her really angry. A neighbour went away from home for two days, leaving a dog tied up without food or water in his yard. We climbed the wall and, with immense difficulty, brought the creature to Madame. She trembled with passion while she fed it. She would have done bodily harm to the owner if she could. She did not even hate Germans. Sometimes at our midday meal Monsieur would read from the paper an account of heavy German casualties or an estimate of the sum total of German losses. He chuckled. So many more dead Boches. So much the better for the world. But Madame always sighed. "_Les pauvres garcons_," she said. "_C'est terrible, terrible._" Then perhaps Monsieur, good patriot, asserted himself and declared that the Boche was better dead. And Madame scolded him for his inhumanity. Our own wounded--_les pauvres blesses_--we mentioned as little as possible. Madame wept at the thought of them, and it was not pleasant to see tears in her bright old eyes. But for all her tender-heartedness Madame did not, so far as I ever could discover, do much for the men of her own nation or of ours. An Englishwoman, in her position and with her vitality, would have sat on half a dozen committees, would have made bandages at a War Work Depot, or packed parcels for prisoners; would certainly have knitted socks all day. Madame did no such things. She managed her own house, mended her own linen, and she darned my socks--which was I suppose, a kind of war work, since I wore uniform. The activities of Englishwomen rather scandalised her. The town was full of nurses, V.A.D.'s, and canteen workers. Madame was too charitable to criticise, but I think she regarded the _jeune fille Anglaise_ as unbecomingly emancipated. She would have been sorry to see her own nieces--Madame had many nieces, but no child of her own--occupied as the English girls were. I have always wondered why Madame took English officers to board in her house. She did not want the money we paid her, for she and Monsieur were well off. Indeed she asked so little of us, and fed us so well, that she cannot possibly have made a profit. And we must have been a nuisance to her. In England Madame would have been called "house proud." She loved every stick of her fine old-fashioned furniture. Polishing of stairs and floors was a joy to her. We tramped in and out in muddy boots. We scattered tobacco ashes. We opened bedroom windows, even on wet nights, and rain came in. We used monstrous and unheard-of quantities of water. Yet no sooner had one guest departed than Madame grew impatient to receive another.