And what do you think she answers? "The skin must be very thick not to break," she says solemnly. "But then you English are all so rich!" Are we? Or are we simply--what? Is it that, bluntly put, we are lazy? After the fall of Antwerp, when a million people had fled into Holland, I saw ladies in furs and jewels holding up beseeching, imploring hands to the kindly but bewildered Dutch folk asking for bread--just bread! It was a terrible sight! But shall we, too, be begging for bread some day? Shall we, too, be longing for the pieces we threw away? Who knows? Finally we sat down to an exquisite supper. First, there was croûte au pot--the nicest soup in the world, said a King of France, and full of nourishment. Then there was a small slice each of tender, juicy boiled beef out of the big soup-pot, never betraying for a minute that that beautiful soup had been made from it. With that beef went the potatoes sautée in butter, and sprinkled with chopped green. After that came the chicken mayonnaise and salad of asparagus tips (otherwise cold scraps and weeds). There are five of us to supper in that little room behind the milliner's shop--an invalided Belgian officer; a little woman from Malines looking after her wounded husband in hospital here; Mdlle. Alice, the daughter, who keeps the millinery shop in the front room; the old mother, a high lace collar on now, and her grey hair curled and coiffured; and myself. The mother waits on us, slipping in and out like a cat, and we eat till there is nothing left to want, and nothing left to eat. And then we have coffee--such coffee! Which reminds me that I quite forgot to say I caught the old lady putting the shells of the hard-boiled egg into the coffee-pot! And that is French cooking in War time! [Illustration: Permit du Dunkirque.] CHAPTER XLIX THE FIGHT IN THE AIR Next morning, Sunday, about half-past ten, I was walking joyfully on that long, beautiful beach at Dunkirk, with all the winds in the world in my face, and a golden sun shining dazzlingly over the blue skies into the deep blue sea-fields beneath. The rain had ceased. The peace of God was drifting down like a dove's wing over the tortured world. From the city of Dunkirk a mile beyond the Plage the chimes of Sabbath bells stole out soothingly, and little black-robed Frenchwomen passed with prayer books and eyes down bent. It was Sunday morning, and for the first time in this new year religion and spring were met in the golden beauty of a day that was windswept and sunlit simultaneously, and that swept away like magic the sad depression of endless grey monotonous days of rain and mud. And then, all suddenly, a change came sweeping over the golden beach and the turquoise skies overhead and all the fair glory of the glittering morning turned with a crash into tragedy. Crash! Crash!