Howard said slowly and mechanically: 'No, you've had enough to eat.
Drink up your milk.'
He turned to Rose and found her inclined to tears.
He knelt up and moved over to her.
'Did anything hit you?' he asked in French.
She shook her head dumbly.
'Don't cry, then,' he said kindly.
'Come and drink your milk.
It'll be good for you.'
She turned her face up to him.
'Are they coming back?
I don't like the noise they make.'
He patted her on the shoulder.
'Never mind,' he said a little unsteadily.
'The noise won't hurt you.
I don't think they're coming back.'
He filled up the one cup with milk and gave it to her.
'Have a drink.'
Ronnie said:
'I wasn't frightened, was I?'
Sheila echoed: 'I wasn't frightened, was I?'
The old man said patiently: 'Nobody was frightened.
Rose doesn't like that sort of noise, but that's not being frightened.'
He stared over to the little crowd around the bus.
Something had happened there; he must go and see.
'You can have an orange,' he said.
'One-third each.
Will you peel it, Rose?'
'Mais oui, monsieur.'
He left the children happy in the prospect of more food, and went slowly to the bus.
There was a violent and distracted clamour from the crowd; most of the women were in tears of fright and rage.
But to his astonishment, there were no casualties save one old woman who had lost two fingers of her left hand, severed cleanly near the knuckles by a bullet.
Three women, well accustomed to first aid in accidents on the farm, were tending her, not inexpertly.
Howard was amazed that no one had been killed.
From the right a dozen bullets had entered the body of the bus towards the rear; from the left the front wheels, bonnet and radiator had been badly shot about.
Between the two the crowd of peasants milling round the door had escaped injury.
Even the crowd in the small Peugeot had escaped, though one of the women in the mule cart was shot through the thigh.
The mule itself was dying in the road.
There was nothing he could do to help the wounded women.
His attention was attracted by a gloomy little knot of men around the driver of the bus; they had lifted the bonnet and were staring despondently at the engine.
The old man joined them; he knew little of machinery, but it was evident even to him that all was not quite right.
A great pool of water lay beneath the engine of the bus; from holes in radiator and cylinder casting the brown, rusty water still ran out.
One of the men turned aside to spit.
'Ca ne marche, plus,' he said succinctly.
It took a moment or two for the full meaning of this to come home to Howard.
'What does one do?' he asked the driver.
'Will there be another bus?'
'Not unless they find a madman for a driver.'
There was a strained silence.
Then the driver said: