She looked up at him.
'Lady with a dog,' she said.
'Where's the dog?'
He looked at the smudged pastel streaks.
She was silent.
'Shall I draw the dog, walking behind on a lead?' he said.
She nodded vigorously.
Howard bent to his task, his knees aching.
But his hand had lost whatever cunning it might once have had, and his dog became a pig.
Sheila said: 'Ladies don't take pigs for a walk.'
His ready wit had not deserted the solicitor.
'This one did,' he said.
'This is the little pig that went to market.'
The child pondered this.
'Draw the little pig that stayed at home,' she said, 'and the little piggy eating roast beef.'
But Howard's knees would stand no more of it.
He stumbled to his feet.
'I'll do that for you tomorrow.'
It was only at that stage he realised that his picture of the lady leading a pig embellished the fly-leaf of A Child's Life of Jesus.
Next day after dejeuner she was waiting for him in the hall.
'Mummy said I might ask you if you wanted a sweet.'
She held up a grubby paper bag with a sticky mass in the bottom.
Howard said gravely: Thank you very much.'
He fumbled in the bag and picked out a morsel which he put into his mouth.
Thank you, Sheila.'
She turned, and ran from him through the estaminet into the big kitchen of the inn.
He heard her chattering in there in fluent French to Madam Lucard as she offered her sweets.
He turned, and Mrs Cavanagh was on the stairs.
The old man wiped his fingers furtively on the handkerchief in his pocket.
They speak French beautifully,' he said.
She smiled. They do, don't they?
The little school they go to is French-speaking, of course.'
He said: 'They just picked it up, I suppose?'
'Oh yes. We didn't have to teach it to them.'
He got to know the children slightly after that and passed the time of day with them whenever he met them alone; on their side they said:
'Good morning, Mr Howard,' as if it was a lesson that they had been taught - which indeed it was.
He would have liked to get to know them better, but he was shy, with the diffidence of age.
He used to sit and watch them playing in the garden underneath the pine-trees sometimes, mysterious games that he would have liked to have known about, that touched dim chords of memory sixty years back.
He did have one success with them, however.
As the sun grew warmer and the grass drier he took to sitting out in the garden after dejeuner for half an hour, in a deck-chair.
He was sitting so one day while the children played among the trees. He watched them covertly.
It seemed that they wanted to play a game they called attention which demanded a whistle, and they had no whistle.
The little boy said: 'I can whistle with my mouth,' and proceeded to demonstrate the art.
His sister pursed up her immature lips and produced only a wet splutter.
From his deck-chair the old man spoke up suddenly.
'I'll make you a whistle, if you like,' he said.
They were silent, staring at him doubtfully.
'Would you like me to make you a whistle?' he enquired.
'When?' asked Ronald.
'Now.