De Panne

It was very difficult for the two friends to know where to go now they were refugees.

However, that evening found them at La Panne, a little place on the seacoast, the most miserable-looking objects you could find, covered with mud and blood, and terribly depressed at this wholesale retreat forced upon them, which came across their high spirits like a shameful bruise.

They remained ten days or so at La Panne, walking along the sandhills and thinking things out.

Everything was in a state of flux and uncertainty hard to bear.

Some of the officers who knew Gypsy's passion for riding lent her their horses, and many a good gallop she had passing through the dunes covered with coarse bent grass beaten down by the wind, out onto the firm flat sands where the grey sea frothed and moaned.

Just outside the village, farther out than the poor ruined Jeannie house, was a little place called the Villa Espagnole, which it seemed to them might be made to do.

It was in a filthy state, but that was easily remedied.

Mary started at once to scrub it with that thoroughness characteristic of her, while Gypsy went into La Panne to fetch out the possessions they had left there.

Then, dropping the subject of himself swiftly but easily, the journalist begins courteously to ask questions.

What am I doing here? Where have I come from? Where am I going? Well, at the present moment, I answer, I'm trying to get to La Panne.

I want to see the Queen of the Belgians waiting for the King and walking there on the yellow dreamy sands by the North Sea.

But the tram isn't running any longer, and the roads are bad today, very bad indeed.

Let us take you in our car.

What are we doing? Where were we going? Anyway, it doesn't matter.

We'll take the car to La Panne.

And after luncheon, off we go.

got to be in the group a general exclamation of assent from the other officers and a protest from the hero me why my ugly mug

will smash the plate but it didn't Reluctantly we turned from this interval in the day's sad round and took the road to La Panne—dust, dunes, deserted villages.

My memory keeps no more definite vision of the run.

But at sunset we came on a big sea-side colony stretched out above the longest beach I ever saw, along the sea-front an esplanade bordered by the usual foolish villas, and behind it a single street filled with hotels and shops.

all the life of the desert region we had traversed seemed to have taken refuge at la panne the long street was swarming with throngs of dark-uniformed belgian soldiers every shop seemed to be doing a thriving trade and the hotels looked as full as beehives June 23.

La Panne.

The particular hive that has taken us in is at the extreme end of the esplanade, where asphalt and iron railings lapse abruptly into sand and sea-grass.

When I looked out of my window this morning I saw only the endless stretch of brown sand against the grey roll of the northern ocean, and on a crest of the dunes, the figure of a solitary sentinel.

Then, dropping the subject of himself swiftly but easily, the journalist begins courteously to ask questions.

What am I doing here? Where have I come from? Where am I going? Well, at the present moment, I answer, I'm trying to get to La Panne.

I want to see the Queen of the Belgians waiting for the King and walking there on the yellow dreamy sands by the North Sea.

But the tram isn't running any longer, and the roads are bad today, very bad indeed.

Let us take you in our car.

What are we doing? Where were we going? Anyway, it doesn't matter.

We'll take the car to La Panne.

And after luncheon off we go.