“Ah, yes,” she said slowly. “You are a part of that poor army. Yes, yes! I understand! It is something we know little about, this terrible war. We hear sad tales: sad tales! These poor Americans! Without food and without medicines! I hope they can return safely to their homes and those who love them.”

Nathaniel found his voice at last. “She said in her letter,” he interrupted, “that she’d come here when she returned. Do you know when that’ll be?”

Madame St. Auge shook her head.

Nathaniel’s face was scarlet. I could see he was sorely tried at the need of speaking before me; but there was no way around it. “I’d like to leave a message for her,” he said. “Could I write a message for her?”

I’d already risen. “There’s no time, Nathaniel! We’re supposed to be getting food. We can’t be all day finding a sack of meal!”

He turned on me with a sort of desperation. “There’s nothing to keep you here! I’m not a child, to be told what to do and what not to do! You can get corn meal without me, can’t you?”

“You need corn meal?” Madame St. Auge asked.

“Enough to get seventeen men to Montreal,” I told her. “We ate our last this morning. I could pay you in hard money.”

“Yes, yes!” she said. “Of course I will spare one sack. It is high, now: fourteen dollars. But for you I will spare it. First I will get paper for your brother, and then the sack shall be brought.”

“Fourteen dollars hard money for one sack of corn!” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” she said sadly. “C’est la guerre!”

She bustled from the room, leaving Ellen looking up at the two of us—and pretty sights we must have been: Nathaniel, so absent that he stared through her as if she were a shadow; and I frowning because of the outrageous price of the corn meal.

Madame St. Auge bustled back with the paper and ink for Nathaniel: then ran from the room again. Nathaniel drew the chair vacated by Madame St. Auge into the farthest corner of the small room. Kneeling before it, he used the seat as a desk, ignoring us but, I was sure, hating us for being near him.

As for Ellen, she said nothing, but continued to stare at me out of eyes that seemed to have a golden fire burning deep within. It was foolish, I thought, to cause her embarrassment because we were disturbed; so I put the corn out of my mind and sat on the floor near her chair. “I have a sister,” I told her. “She’s your age, but her hair is black and straight.”