“I do not think we want to change their hearts.” Alix, all unversed in these large subjects as she was, felt herself impelled to make the answer so obvious to every French mind. “I do not think we care about their hearts. When a bad man is guillotined, it is sufficient that his head should be gone. His heart does not concern us.” Giles at this laughed loudly and Aunt Bella’s eye-glassed gaze turned to glitter reprobation at him. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying, Giles. She is too young to have followed or understood the lamentable policy of her country. You really shouldn’t encourage her.” “But it seems to me she has been following. She’s made the only honest answer. Have you heard people talking about it a good deal, Alix?” She did not mind his mirth or Aunt Bella’s reprobation. She did not care at all what they thought about France. How could one expect even English friends really to understand? “I have heard people talk at Maman’s,” she said. Blaise was on a chair beside her eating an excellent dinner, and Giles, still laughing, said: “Do you know what he looks like? A Boche baby. There was one born in a village we occupied after the Germans had been there for two years. It was the funniest, jolliest little fellow; but awfully ugly; with a face just like that.” “But it was half French, I imagine,” said Alix dryly. “Certainly half French, I regret to say. But he looked all German. And I’m sure that if you’d had to take care of him you’d have been as kind to him as you are to your kitten.” “I do not care for babies,” Alix objected. “You’d have been kind to him all the same. You wouldn’t have wanted to see his head cut off.” “I do not want to see anyone’s head cut off; but if it were a choice between a Boche and a French baby, I should choose the French one to live. That is all we ask of our allies,” Alix added, looking over at Giles with kindly determination; “to help us to live;—as we have helped them;—even at the expense of the Germans.” Aunt Bella, now, changed the subject. “How is Mr. Westmacott, Giles?” “No better, I’m afraid.” “Have they a trained nurse yet?” “He won’t have one. He won’t admit he’s so bad.” “It must be very taxing for Enid.” (Aunt Bella always called Toppie by her real name.) “How does she bear it?” “She looks very worn,” said Giles. “And I’m afraid she won’t be at all well off when he dies,” said Aunt Bella, as though she placed Toppie’s approaching bereavement and subsequent impoverishment in the same category. “She won’t be able to go on living in the way she does now. And she has been trained to no profession. I have always so blamed Mr. Westmacott for keeping her with him and giving her no education.” “Toppie is educated, I think,” said Giles, dryly, but his dryness did not conceal from Alix the distress Aunt Bella’s surmises caused him. How much more capable Aunt Bella was, Alix reflected, of sympathizing with large vague masses of humanity than with one human being.