The hotel routine was already disarranged.
Furniture was being taken from the restaurant; it was clear that no more meals would be served there.
He found his way into the kitchen, where he discovered the femme de chambre in depressed consultation with the other servants, and arranged for a tray to be sent up to his room.
That was a worrying, trying sort of day.
The news from the north was uniformly bad; in the town people stood about in little groups talking in low tones.
He went to the station after breakfast with Ronnie, to enquire about the trains to Paris, leaving Sheila in bed in the devoted care of la petite Rose.
They told him at the station that the trains to Paris were much disorganised 'a cause de la situation militaire,' but trains were leaving every three or four hours.
So far as they knew, the services from Paris to St Malo were normal, though that was on the Chemin de L'Ouest.
He walked up with Ronnie to the centre of the town, and ventured rather timidly into the children's department of a very large store.
A buxom Frenchwoman came forward to serve him, and sold him a couple of woollen jerseys for the children and a grey, fleecy blanket.
He bought the latter more by instinct than by reason, fearful of the difficulties of the journey.
Of all difficulties, the one he dreaded most was that the children would get ill again.
They bought a few more sweets, and went back to the hotel.
Already the hall was thronged with seedy-looking French officials, querulous from their journey and disputing over offices.
The girl from the desk met Howard as he went upstairs.
He could keep his room for one more night, she said; after that he must get out.
She would try and arrange for meals to be sent to the room, but he would understand - it would not be as she would wish the service.
He thanked her and went up upstairs.
La petite Rose was reading about Babar to Sheila from the picture-book; she was curled up in a heap on the bed and they were looking at the pictures together.
Sheila looked up at Howard, bright and vivacious, as he remembered her at Cidoton.
'Regardez,' she said, 'voici Jacko climbing right up the queue de Babar on to his back!'
She wriggled in exquisite amusement.
'Isn't he naughty!.'
He stopped and looked at the picture with them.
'He is a naughty monkey, isn't he?' he said.
Sheila said: 'Drefully naughty.'
Rose said very softly: 'Qu'est-ce que monsieur a dit?'
Ronnie explained to her in French, and the bilingual children went on in the language of the country.
To Howard they always spoke in English, but French came naturally to them when playing with other children.
It was not easy for the old man to determine in which language they were most at home.
On the whole, Ronnie seemed to prefer to speak in English.
Sheila slipped more naturally into French, perhaps because she was younger and more recently in charge of nurses.
The children were quite happy by themselves.
Howard got out the attache case and looked at it; it was very small to hold necessities for three of them.
He decided that Ronnie might carry that one, and he would get a rather larger case to carry himself, to supplement it.
Fired by this idea, he went out of the bedroom to go to buy a cheap fibre case.
On the landing he met the femme de chambre.
She hesitated, then stopped him.
'Monsieur is leaving tomorrow?' she said.
'I have to go away, because they want the room,' he replied.
'But I think the little girl is well enough to travel.
I shall get her up for dejeuner, and then this afternoon she can come out for a little walk with us.'
'Ah, that will be good for her.
A little walk, in the sun.' She hesitated again, and then she said: 'Monsieur is travelling direct to England?'
He nodded.
'I shall not stay in Paris.
I shall take the first train to St Malo.'
She turned her face up to him, lined and prematurely old, beseechingly.
'Monsieur - it is terrible to ask. Would you take la petite Rose with you, to England?'
He was silent; he did not quite know what to say to that.