THE ZEPPELIN RAID.
Judy's cry did her good, although it left her in such a swollen state
she was not fit to keep shop, which was what she had planned to do for
the afternoon.
"I think I'll go round to the studio in Rue Brea for a little while. I
want to get some things."
What she really wanted was to get a bath and to be alone for a few
hours. Her kind hosts thought it would be wise to let her do whatever
she wanted, so they gave her God-speed but begged her not to be out
late.
Judy now longed for solitude with the same eagerness she had before
longed for companionship. She knew it would be unwise for her to give
up to this desire to any extent and determined to get back to her kind
friends before dark, but be alone she must for a while. She got the key
from the concierge and entered the studio. All was as she had left it.
Windows and doors opened wide soon dispelled the close odor. A cold bath
in the very attractive white porcelain tub, the pride of the Bents, made
poor Judy feel better in spite of herself.
"I don't want to feel better. I've been brave and noble all morning and
now I want to be weak and miserable. I don't care whether school keeps
or not. I am a poor, forlorn, broken-hearted girl, without any friends
in all the world except some Normandy peasants. The Browns will all hate
me, and my mother and father I may never see again. Oh, Kent! Kent! Why
didn't you just pick me up and make me go with you? If you had been
very, very firm, I'd have gone."
Judy remembered with a grim smile how in old days at college she had
longed to wear mourning and how absurd she had made herself by dyeing
her hair and draping herself in black. "I'm going into mourning now. It
is about all I can do for Kent. It won't cost much and somehow I'd feel
better." Judy, ever visualizing, pictured herself in black with organdy
collar and cuffs and a mournful, patient look. "I'll just go on selling
tarts. It will help the Tricots and give me my board." She counted out
her money, dwindled somewhat, but now that she was working she felt she
might indulge her grief to the extent of a black waist and some white
collars and cuffs. "I've got a black skirt and I'll get my blue suit
dyed to-morrow. I'll line my black sport hat with white crepe. That will
make it do." In pity for herself, she wept again.
She slipped out of the studio and made her few purchases at a little
shop around the corner. Madame, the proprietaire, was all sympathy. She
had laid in an especial stock of cheap mourning, she told Judy, as there
was much demand for it now.
It took nimble fingers to turn the jaunty sport hat into a sad little
mourning bonnet, but Judy was ever clever at hat making, and when
she finished just before the sun set, she viewed her handiwork with
pardonable pride. She slipped into her cheap black silk waist and pinned
on the collar and cuffs. The hat was very becoming, so much so that
Judy had another burst of tears.
"I can't bear for it to be becoming. I want to look as ugly and forlorn
as possible."
She determined to leave her serge suit in the studio and come on the
following day to take it to a dye shop. As she was to do this, she
decided not to leave the key with the concierge but take it with her.
Her kind friends looked sadly at the mourning. They realized when they
saw it that Judy had given up all hope of her friend.
"Ah, the pity of it! The pity of it!" exclaimed the old grenadier.
Marie, whose apple-like countenance was not very expressive of anything
but health, looked as sympathetic as the shape of her face would allow.
Round rosy cheeks, round black eyes, and a round red mouth are not easy
to mold into tragic lines, but Judy knew that Marie was feeling deeply
for her. She was thinking of her Jean and the possibility of turning her
bridal finery into mourning. There was so much mourning now and
according to the _Temps_, the war was hardly begun.
"I'll have my serge suit dyed to-morrow," Judy confided to her.
"Ah, no! Do not have it dyed! Mere Tricot and I can do it here and do it
beautifully. The butcher's wife over the way is dyeing to-morrow and she
will give us some of her mixture. It is her little brother who fell only
yesterday."
That night there was great excitement in the Montparnasse quarter. A
fleet of air ships circled over the city, dropping bombs as they flew.
The explosions were terrific. The people cowered in their homes at first
and then came rushing out on the streets as the noise subsided.
Pere Tricot came back with the news that no great harm had been done,
but it was his opinion that the Prussians had been after the Luxembourg.
"They know full well that our art treasures are much to us, and they
would take great pleasure in destroying them. The beasts!"
"Where did the bombs strike?" asked Judy from her couch in the living
room. She had wept until her pillow had to be turned over and then had
at last sunk into a sleep of exhaustion only to be awakened by the
ear-splitting explosions.
"I don't know exactly, but it was somewhere over towards the Gardens of
the Luxembourg. I thank the good God you were here with us, my child."