That idea had never dawned upon us, and we set to thinking where we could securely hide our groceries in three different places.  Finally it was agreed that one part should be put back of the piles of sheets in the linen closet; the second part hidden on the top shelf of a very high cupboard in my dressing-room with toilet articles grouped in front of it; while the third was carried up a tiny flight of stairs to the attic and there pushed through a small opening into the dark space that leads to the beams and rafters.  It was all so infantile that we clapped our hands and were as happy as kings when we had discovered such a good cachette.

Night was coming on as I stood pouring the last of the plum jam into the glasses lined up along the kitchen table.  Berthe had counted nearly a hundred, and I was seriously thinking of adopting jam-making as a profession, when with much noise and trumpeting, a closed auto whisked up the avenue and stopped before the entrance.  I hurried to the kitchen door, untying my apron as I ran, arriving just as an officer jumped from the motor, and before I had time to recognize him in his new uniform, Captain Gauthier rushed forward, exclaiming: 

“I’ve come to fetch Elizabeth and the children!”

The others, too, had heard the motor, and in an instant there was quite an assembly in the courtyard.

“I had great difficulty leaving Paris at all.  My passport is only good until midnight,” the captain was explaining as his wife and H. appeared, and almost without time for greeting.  “Make haste,” he continued, turning to Madame Gauthier.  “We must be off in a quarter of an hour, or our machine will never reach town on time.”

I hurried with Elizabeth to her apartment, where we woke and dressed two very astonished children, while the little maid literally threw the toilet necessities and a few clothes into a huge Gladstone bag.

“Leon evidently doesn’t think us safe down here!  You’d better come, too,” murmured Elizabeth as we went downstairs.

In the meantime, H. had questioned our friend as to what had transpired in Paris within the last twenty-four hours.

“England will probably join us—­and there is every possibility of Italy’s remaining neutral,” he announced, as we made our appearance.  And then—­“You must come to Paris.  You’re too near the front here,” he continued, as he piled wife, babies and servant into the taxi.

And so, with hardly time for an adieu, the motor whisked away as it had come, leaving H. and me looking beyond it into the night.

When I returned to the pantry, I found Nini weeping copiously.  Imagining she had become frightened by the sudden departure of our friends, I was collecting my wits to console and reassure her, when she burst forth, “Oh, Madame—­Madame—­the pates—­”

“Well?”

“The lovely pates!—­all burned to cinders!  Such a waste!”