After dinner they held a council of war. It was Manon who opened it, Manon the woman, the housewife, the Queen of the Linen and the Store Cupboard.
“I shall go to Amiens,” she said; “will you please give me my note-book?”
Brent surrendered it to her, and smoked his pipe, while she sat biting the end of the pencil, a very serious and pre-occupied little woman whose eyes looked at the mottled and disfigured face of the stone house over the way, and whose right hand kept jotting down notes on the paper.
“I can hire a pony and cart at Ste. Claire. Yes, I will go to Ste. Claire the day after to-morrow, and I shall stay away three days. There are so many things that we shall need.”
Brent sunned himself in the pleasant seriousness of her enthusiasm. Now and again he was conscious of a moment
