We stood watching them cross the Grande Place, that tall girl and the two little ones, and Pierre. Fortune touched Brand on the arm. “Plucky, that girl,” he said. “Took it without a whimper. I wonder if she cared?” Brand turned on him rather savagely. “Cared? Of course she cared. But she had expected it for four years, grown up to the idea. These war children have no illusions about the business. They know that the odds are in favour of death.” He raised his hands above his head with a sudden passionate gesture. “Christ God!” he said. “The tragedy of those people! The monstrous cruelty of it all!” Fortune took his hand and patted it in a funny affectionate way. “You are too sensitive, Wicky. ‘A sensitive plant in a garden grew’--a war-garden, with its walls blown down, and dead bodies among the little daisies-o. I try to cultivate a sense of humour and a little irony. It’s a funny old war, Wicky, believe me, if you look at it in the right light.” Wickham groaned. “I see no humour in it, nor light anywhere.” Fortune chanted again the beginning of his anthem: “_Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche_.” As usual there was a crowd about us, smiling, waving handkerchiefs and small flags, pressing forward to shake hands and to say “_Vivent les Anglais!_” It was out of that crowd that a girl came and stood in front of us, with a wave of her hand. “Good morning, British officers! I’m English--or Irish, which is good enough. Welcome to Lille.” Fortune shook hands with her first and said very formally, in his mocking way: “How do you do? Are you by chance my long-lost sister? Is there a strawberry-mark on your left arm?” She laughed with a big, open-mouthed laugh, on a contralto note that was good to hear. “I’m everybody’s sister who speaks the English tongue, which is fine to the ears of me after four years in Lille. Eileen O’Connor, by your leave, gentlemen.” “Not Eileen O’Connor of Tipperary?” asked Fortune gravely. “You know the Long Long Way, of course?” “Once of Dublin,” said the girl, “and before the war, of Holland Street, Kensington, in the village of London. Oh, to hear the roar of ‘buses in the High Street and to see the glint of sunlight on the Round Pond!” She was a tall girl, shabbily dressed in an old coat and skirt with a bit of fur round her neck and hat, but with a certain look of elegance in the thin line of her figure and the poise of her head. Real Irish, by the look of her dark eyes and a rather irregular nose and humorous lips. Not pretty in the English way, but spirited, and with some queer charm in her. Wickham Brand was holding her hand. “Good Lord! Eileen O’Connor? I used to meet you, years ago, at the Wilmots--those funny tea-parties in Chelsea.” “With farthing buns and cigarettes, and young boys with big ideas!” The girl laughed with a kind of wonderment, and stood close to Wickham Brand, holding his Sam Brown belt and staring up into his face.