Henri smiled appreciatively.
It might all have ended there very easily. Sara Lee might have fought
the War Office single-handed and won out, but it is extremely unlikely.
The chances at that moment were that she would spend endless days and
hours in anterooms, and tell her story and make her plea a hundred times.
And then--go back home to Harvey and the Leete house, and after a time,
like Mrs. Gregory, speak rather too often of "the time I went abroad."
But Sara Lee was to go to France, and even further, to the fragment of
unconquered Belgium that remained. And never so long as she lived, would
she be able to forget those days or to speak of them easily. So she
stood by the window trying not to cry, and a little donkey drawing a
coster's cart moved out in front of the traffic and was caught by a motor
bus. There was only time for the picture--the tiny beast lying there
and her owner wringing his hands. Such of the traffic as could get by
swerved and went on. London must move, though a thousand willing little
beasts lay dying.
And Sara moved too. One moment she was there by the window. And the
next she had given a stifled cry and ran out.
"Bless my soul!" said Mr. Travers, and got up slowly.
Henri was already up and at the window. What he saw was Sara Lee making
her way through the stream of vehicles, taking a dozen chances for her
life. Henri waited until he saw her crouched by the donkey, its head
on her knee. Then he, too, ran out.
That is how Henri, of no other name that may be given, met Sara Lee
Kennedy, of Pennsylvania--under a London motor bus. And that, I think,
will be the picture he carries of her until he dies, her soft eyes full
of pity, utterly regardless of the dirt and the crowd and an
expostulating bobby, with that grotesque and agonized head on her knees.
Henri crawled under the bus, though the policeman was extremely anxious
to keep him out. And he ran a practiced eye over the injured donkey.
"It's dying," said Sara Lee with white lips.
"It will die," replied Henri, "but how soon? They are very strong,
these little beasts."
The conductor of the bus made a suggestion then, one that froze the
blood round Sara Lee's heart: "If you'll move away and let us run over
it proper it'll be out of its trouble, miss."
Sara Lee raised haggard eyes to Henri.