Later, when Goyle came, she ushered us all into the parlour she had reserved for our use. She watched us for a moment as we opened a tin of bully beef and pulled some biscuits from our pockets, and then, motioning to us to put these things away, began to dust the table and lay a cloth. In a short while she had put before us a dainty lunch, soup, boiled chicken, a stew of vegetables, coffee, and cheese. We would have preferred our servants to have done the cooking and waited on ourselves, so that she could look after her own people, but she insisted on doing everything herself, bringing each dish in. We asked her if we could do anything for her, and she drew up a methodical list of things she wanted from a neighbouring village--coffee, rice, flour, and oil for her lamp. I got up to get these things, and at the door she stopped me and pressed her well-worn purse into my hand to buy the things. I had difficulty in making her take the money back. Outside the farm I found a party of men burying one of the company who had been killed in the night. They had wrapped him in his coat, and were digging a rough grave by the roadside. One of the men was at work on a wooden cross made of two bits of board from the lid of a ration-box. He had scrawled R.I.P. and the date in large letters, and was laboriously tracing out the dead man's name and number. The village where I was to get the provisions lay about half a mile away along an open, desolate road. All along the road men lay entrenched. The word had gone round that the enemy had withdrawn, and most of the men were sleeping beside their rifles. Some of the inhabitants of the village were coming back after the attack, and I found a tiny store open where I could get the things the farmer's wife required. On my way back I passed a wine shop, which was crowded with peasants, all talking and drinking coffee and little glasses of rum. I wondered what they thought of it all, and imagined they were too bewildered to have any opinions. On all their faces were evident signs of satisfaction at being able to return to the village. They thought that the "_boches_" were by now probably running back hard to Germany, and all would be over in a few days.