Then back along the road flashes the grey car. And there again is Colonel Farquharson, cool, calm, and unperturbed. And behind him, in the car, barking joyfully at the sight of their mistress, are three big dogs. "Mais comme les Anglais sont gentils!" say the Belgian soldiers along the road. * * * * * Out of the burning town of Lierre that same day a canary and a grey Congo parrot are tenderly handed over to my care by a couple of English Tommies who have found them in a burning house. The canary is in a little red cage, and the Tommies have managed to put in some lumps of sugar. "The poor little thing is starving!" says a Tommy compassionately. "It'll be better with you, ma'am." I bring the birds back in my car to Antwerp. But the parrot is very frightened. He will not eat. He will not drink. He looks as if he is going to die, until I ask Mr. Cherry Kearton to come and see him. And then, voilà! The famous English naturalist bends over him, talks, pets him, and in a few minutes "Coco" is busy trimming Cherry Kearton's moustache with his little black beak, and from that very moment the bird begins to recover. As I write the parrot and canary sit here on my table, the parrot perching on the canary's cage. The boom of cannon is growing fainter and fainter as the Germans appear to be pushed further and further back; the canary is singing, and the grey parrot is cracking nuts; and I think of the man who rescued them, and hope that all goes well with him, who, with death staring him in the face, had time and thought to save the lives of a couple of birds. His name he told me was Sergeant Thomas Marshall of Winston Churchill's Marines. He said: "If you see my wife ever, you can tell her you've met me, ma'am." CHAPTER XXIX TUESDAY It is Tuesday now. At seven o'clock in the morning old sad-eyed Maria knocks at my door. "Good news, Madame! Malines has been retaken!" That is cheering. And old Maria and myself, like everyone else, are eager to believe the best. The grey day, however, is indescribably sombre. From a high, grassy terrace at the top of the hotel I look out across the city towards the points where the Germans are attacking us. Great black clouds that yet are full of garish light float across the city, and through the clouds one, two, three, four aeroplanes can be seen, black as birds, and moving continually hither and thither, while far below the old town lies, with its towers and gilded Gothic beauty, and its dark red roofs, and its wide river running to meet the sea. I go down to the War Office and see Commandant Chabeau. He looks pale and haggard. His handsome grey eyes are full of infinite sadness. "To-day it would be wiser, Madame, that you don't go out of the city," he says in his gentle, chivalrous voice. "C'est trop dangereux!" I want to ask him a thousand questions.