Outwardly they were placid enough, but it was not the placidity of content.

It bespoke rather a dumb, disciplined acceptance by those who have had fatalism literally thrust on them as a doctrine to be practiced.
Looking back on it I can recall just one woman I saw in France who maintained an unquenchable blitheness of spirit.

She was the little woman who managed the small cafe in Maubeuge where we ate our meals.
Perhaps her frugal French mind rejoiced that business remained so good, for many officers dined at her table and, by Continental standards, paid her well and abundantly for what she fed them; but I think a better reason lay in the fact that she had within her an innate buoyancy which nothing--not even war--could daunt.
She was one of those women who remain trig and chic though they be slovens by instinct.

Her blouse was never clean, but she wore it with an air.

Her skirt testified that skillets spit grease; but in it she somehow looked as trim as a trout fly.