Presently there was a tap on the door, and the/emme de chambre was there bearing a tray of coffee and rolls.
Behind her came la petite Rose, dressed in her Sunday best, with a large black straw hat, a tight black overcoat, and white socks.
She looked very uncomfortable.
Howard said kindly in French: 'Good morning, Rose.
Are you coming with us to England?'
She said: 'Oui, monsieur.'
The femme de chambre said: 'All night she has been talking about going in the train, and going to England, and going to live with her father.
She has hardly slept at all, that one.'
There was a twist in her smile as she spoke; it seemed to Howard that she was not far from tears again.
'That's fine,' he said. He turned to the femme de chambre. 'Sit down and have a cup of coffee with us.
Rose will, won't you, Rose?'
The woman said: 'Merci, monsieur. But I have the sandwiches to prepare, and I have had my coffee.'
She rubbed the little girl's shoulder.
'Would you like another cup of coffee, ma petite?'
She left Rose with them and went out.
In the bedroom Howard sat the children down, each with a buttered roll to eat and a cup full of weak coffee to drink.
The children ate very slowly; he had finished his own meal by the time they were only half-way through.
He pottered about and packed up their small luggage; Rose had her own things in a little attache case on the floor beside her.
The children ate on industriously.
The femme de chambre came back with several large, badly-wrapped parcels of food for the journey, and a very large wine bottle full of milk.
There,' she said unsteadily.
'Nobody will starve today!'
The children laughed merrily at the poor joke.
Rose had finished, and Ronnie was engulfing the last mouthful, but Sheila was still eating steadily.
There was nothing now to wait for, and the old man was anxious to get to the station for fear that they might miss a train.
'You don't want that,' he said to Sheila, indicating her half-eaten roll. 'You'd better leave it.
We've got to go now.'
'I want it,' she said mutinously.
'But we've got to go now.'
'I want it.'
He was not going to waste energy over that.
'All right,' he said, 'you can bring it along with you.'
He picked up their bags and shepherded them all out into the corridor and down the stairs.
At the door of the hotel he turned to the/emme de chambre.
'If there is any difficulty I shall come back here,' he said.
'Otherwise, as I said, I will send a telegram when we reach England, and Rose is with her father.'
She said quickly: 'But monsieur must not pay for that, Henri will send the telegram.'
He was touched.
'Anyway, it will be sent directly we arrive in London.
Au revoir, mademoiselle.'
'Au revoir, monsieur.
Bonne chance.'
She stood and watched them as he guided the three children across the road in the thin morning sunlight, the tears running all unheeded down the furrows of her face.
In the station there was great confusion.
It was quite impossible to find out the times or likelihood of trains, or whether, amongst all the thronging soldiers, there would be seats for children.
The most that he could learn was that trains for Paris came in at Quai 4 and that there had been two since midnight.
He went to the booking-office to get a ticket for Rose, but it was closed.
'One does not take tickets any more,' a bystander said.
'It is not necessary.'
The old man stared at him. 'One pays, then, on the train, perhaps?'