He carried his roses in his left hand, held a little before him, that nothing might touch them, stiffly, and looked straight ahead of him as he marched.
A woman, standing beside me to watch them go, said to me, "They are so young."
The band passed. I do not know what it was playing.
The woman and I stood together to watch those boys go away.
These last days Madame Alice has been even more sullen than usual. She arrives in the morning, they tell me--she arrives at six and I am never there to see--with a long face, and will say good day to nobody, and grumbles because somebody's handkerchief, or somebody's bag of raffia grasses, or somebody's package of letters, had fallen from his night-table to litter her floor. She grumbles about "pigs," and bangs things.
When I arrive I find her still grumbling and banging.
This morning she was washing the face of the new 25. She washed his poor face very gently, no hands in the world could have been kinder or more careful than hers, or more delicate of touch, though they are big and red, but she was grumbling all the time.
I said, "Good morning," and she hunched one shoulder.
Madame Marthe came in and said that I had better go and fetch my boiled water before somebody else emptied the boiler.
When I was coming back with it from the office, Madame Alice was standing by the window at the turn of the passage. She had put her pail down on the floor, with 25's soap and things thrown down beside it. She stood with one arm against the window-pane and her face buried in the crook of her elbow.
I said, "Oh, Madame Alice, are you ill, Madame Alice?"
She hunched her shoulder. I put my big pitcher down by her pail on the floor, and patted her shoulder and said, "Please, oh, please."
She said, not turning or raising her head, "They've taken him to the children's hospital--Jeanjean, my little boy, you know; he has been very ill all the week. A neighbour said, five days ago, she would take him to the Clinique, there is no hour when I can get away from here to take him. It was the neighbour who looked after him the day they sent him home from school because he was sick. She is very good, but she has not much time. She has got her work. She did not know how ill he was. I told her, the first day, to take him to the Clinique, but that day she had no time. She did not tell me. She told me that at the Clinique they said it was nothing. She told me that every day. For five days she did not take him. I only saw him in the nights, you know. Oh, it is horrible when you can only see them at night."