And he is very young.'
Arvers nodded.
'I do not know what will become of him,' he said morosely.
Howard sat down in the silence which followed and took a sip of Pernod.
'One of two things will happen to him,' he said.
'One is, that the Germans will catch him very soon.
He may try to kill one of them, in which case they might shoot him out of hand.
They will take him to their mines.
He will be rebellious the whole time, and before long he will be beaten to death.
That is the one thing.'
The horse-dealer dropped into the chair on the opposite side of the table, the bottle of Pernod between them.
There was something in the old man's tone that was very familiar to him.
'What is the other thing?' he asked.
'He will escape with us to England,' said Howard.
'He will end up in America, kindly treated and well cared for, and in a year or two these horrors will have faded from his mind.'
Arvers eyed him keenly.
'Which of those is going to happen?'
That is in your hands, monsieur.
He will never escape the Germans unless you help him.'
There was a long, long silence in the falling dusk.
Arvers said at last:
'I will see what I can do.
Tomorrow I will drive Mademoiselle to Le Conquet and we will talk it over with Jean Henri.
You must stay here with the children and keep out of sight.'
Chapter 9
Howard spent most of the next day sitting in the paddock in the sun, while the children played around him.
His growing, stubbly beard distressed him with a sense of personal uncleanliness, but it was policy to let it grow.
Apart from that, he was feeling well; the rest was welcome and refreshing.
Madame dragged an old cane reclining chair from a dusty cellar and wiped it over with a cloth for him; he thanked her and installed himself in it.
The children had the kitten, Jo-Jo, in the garden and were stuffing it with copious draughts of milk and anything that they could get it to eat.
Presently it escaped and climbed up into the old man's lap and went to sleep.
After a while he found himself making whistles on a semi-production basis, while the children stood around and watched.
From time to time the Polish boy, Marjan, appeared by the paddock gate and stood looking at them, curious, inscrutable.
Howard spoke to him and asked him to come in and join them, but he muttered something to the effect that he had work to do, and sheered away shyly.
Presently he would be back again, watching the children as they played.
The old man let him alone, content not to hurry the friendship.
In the middle of the afternoon, suddenly, there was a series of heavy explosions over in the west.
These mingled with the sharp crack of gunfire; the children stopped their games and stared in wonder.
Then a flight of three single-engined fighter aeroplanes got up like partridges from some field not very far away and flew over them at about two thousand feet, heading towards the west and climbing at full throttle as they went.
Ronnie said wisely: 'That's bombs, I know.
They go whee... before they fall, and then they go boom.
Only it's so far off you can't hear the whee part.'
'Whee... Boom!' said Sheila.
Pierre copied her, and presently all the children were running round wheeing and booming.
The real detonations grew fewer, and presently died in the summer afternoon.
That was the Germans bombing someone, wasn't it, Mr Howard?' asked Ronnie.
'I expect so,' he replied.
'Come and hold this bark while I bind it.'
In the production of whistles the raid faded from their minds.
In the later afternoon Nicole returned with Arvers.