The mistress of the inn believed in pretty serving maids, and Célestine was not pretty. The thick skin of her face was a mask which let pass not a ray of the iridescences of the soul; before that sad dead face men stood embarrassed or even angry. So she did not wear the white aprons and caps, the lacy waists of the tablemaids, but rough blue garments; and did not flit outside under the trees, but was held to the bedrooms and the kitchen’s back regions. She was the drudge; she started with the day. She polished boots, laid fires, carried hot water and trays up countless stairs, made beds, swept rooms, swabbed halls. She carried heavy luggage upstairs and obeyed the rageful tyranny of the bells. Midnight would strike before she threw herself upon her narrow pallet under the eaves. Every afternoon, from four to six, she took the baby of the mistress of the inn out in its perambulator. This was her recreation and her rest. After the flying field had been established on the National Road, it was there she would go. The place had become the town promenade. Out to it, along the road, especially on Sundays, the inhabitants would go in family groups--in family groups in which there were no men, unless, perhaps, some brittle old grandfather. Once at the field, they stood about respectfully noting everything avidly and calling one another’s attention to what they saw; and small boys, terribly interested in what for several years now had been the male’s sole interest, slipping under the ropes, got to where they had no business to be. Célestine, still more shy than the rest, took her station across the road from the camp and a little to one side. From here she could see across the plains to the hills in the east, and also that part of the flying field from which the planes sprang into the air or hoveringly landed. She sat in the clover; it was peaceful here; the baby slept; her own soul drowsed. An old farmer across the way ploughed slowly behind his one old horse; now and then a lark went high up in the air and sang. It was hard to remember that in the low hills beyond, pretty as opals, red carnage boiled and men died. From those far hills the planes came winging back late in the afternoon. Far-fixed eyes of mechanics on the field, a pointing finger here or there, were the first signs to Célestine. She saw dots, small and incredibly high. They became moths, shining--white--and quick as thunder the fliers were near. They came from great battles, and jousts, and fabulous adventures; and as they neared, with hearts seemingly full of a secret joy at terrible pranks they had played, they gambolled and capered and tumbled along the skies.