The man shrugged his shoulders.
'Perhaps.'
There was nobody to check tickets as they passed on to the platform.
He led the children through the crowd, Sheila still chewing her half-eaten roll of bread, clutched firmly in a hand already hot.
Quai 4 was practically deserted, rather to his surprise.
There did not seem to be great competition to get to Paris; all the traffic seemed to be the other way.
He saw an engine-driver, and approached him:
'It is here that the train for Paris will arrive?'
'But certainly.'
The statement was not reassuring.
The empty spaces of the platform oppressed the old man; they were unnatural, ominous.
He walked along to a seat and put down all the parcels and attache cases on it, then settled down to wait until a train should come.
The children began running up and down the platform, playing games of their own making.
Presently, mindful of the chill that had delayed him, he called Ronnie and Sheila to hun and took off their coats, thinking to put them on when they were in the train.
As an afterthought he turned to Rose.
'You also,' he said. 'You will be better playing without your coat, and the hat.'
He took them off and put them on the seat beside him.
Then he lit his pipe, and settled down to wait in patience for the train.
It came at about half-past eight, when they had been there for an hour and a half.
There were a few people on the platform by that time, not very many.
It steamed into the station, towering above them; there were two soldiers on the footplate of the engine with the train crew.
To his delight, it was not a crowded train.
He made as quickly as he could for a first-class compartment, and found one occupied only by two morose officers of the Armee de l'Air.
The children swarmed on to the seats and climbed all over the carriage, examining everything, chattering to each other in mixed French and English.
The two officers looked blacker; before five minutes had elapsed they had got up, swearing below their breath, and had removed to another-carriage.
Howard looked at them helplessly as they went.
He would have liked to apologise, but he didn't know how to put it.
Presently, he got the children to sit down.
Mindful of chills, he said:
'You'd better put your coats on now.
Rose, you put yours on, too.'
He proceeded to put Sheila into hers.
Rose looked around the carriage blankly.
'Monsieur - where is my coat?
And my hat, also?'
He looked up.
'Eh?
You had them when we got into the train?'
But she had not had them.
She had rushed with the other children to the carriage, heedless, while Howard hurried along behind her, burdened with luggage.
Her coat and hat had been left on the station bench.
Her face wrinkled up, and she began to cry.
The old man stared at her irritably for a moment; he had thought that she would be a help to him.
Then the patience borne of seventy years of disappointments came to his aid; he sat down and drew her to him, wiping her eyes.
'Don't bother about it,' he said gently.
'We'll get another hat and another coat in Paris.
You shall choose them yourself.'
She sobbed: 'But they were so expensive.'
He wiped her eyes again.
'Never mind,' he said.