'Try a little bit.'
The other children looked on curiously.
The little boy whispered:
'Merci, monsieur.
Maman dit que non.
Settlement apres dejeuner.'
For a moment the old man's mind went back to the torn bodies left behind them by the roadside covered roughly with a rug; he forced his mind away from that.
'All right,' he said in French, 'we'll keep it, and you shall have it after dejeuner.'
He put the morsel carefully in a corner of the pram seat, the little boy in grey watched with grave interest.
'It will be quite safe there.'
Pierre trotted on beside him, quite content.
The two younger children tired again before long; in four hours they had walked six miles, and it was now very hot.
He put them both into the pram and pushed them down the road, the other two walking by his side.
Mysteriously now the lorry traffic was all gone; there was nothing on the road but refugees.
The road was full of refugees.
Farm carts, drawn by great Flemish horses, lumbered down the middle of the road at walking pace, loaded with furniture and bedding and sacks of food and people. Between them and around them seethed the motor traffic; big cars and little cars, occasional ambulances and motor-bicycles, all going to the west.
There were innumerable cyclists and long trails of people pushing hand-carts and perambulators in the torrid July heat.
All were choked with dust, all sweating and distressed, all pressing on to Montargis.
From time to time an aeroplane flew near the road; then there was panic and an accident or two.
But no bombs were dropped that day, nor was the road to Montargis machine-gunned.
The heat was intense.
At about a quarter to twelve they came to a place where a little stream ran beside the road, and here there was another block of many traffic blocks caused by the drivers of the farm wagons who stopped to water their horses.
Howard decided to make a halt; he pushed the perambulator a little way over the field away from the road to where a little sandy spit ran out into the stream beneath the trees.
'We'll stop here for dejeuner,' he said to the children.
'Go and wash your hands and faces in the water.'
He took the food and sat down in the shade; he was very tired, but there was still five miles or more to Montargis.
Surely there would be a motor-bus there?
Ronnie said: 'May I paddle, Mr Howard?'
He roused himself.
'Bathe if you want to,' he said.
'It's hot enough.'
'May I really bathe?'
Sheila echoed: 'May I really bathe, too?'
He got up from the grass.
'I don't see why not,' he said slowly.
'Take your things off and have a bathe before dejeuner, if you want to.'
The English children needed no further encouragement.
Ronnie was out of his few clothes and splashing in the water in a few seconds; Sheila got into a tangle with her Liberty bodice and had to be helped.
Howard watched them for a minute, amused.
Then he turned to Rose.
'Would you like to go in, too?' he said in French.
She shook her head in scandalised amazement.
'It is not nice, that, monsieur.
Not at all.'
He glanced at the little naked bodies gleaming in the sun.
'No,' he said reflectively, 'I suppose it's not.
Still, they may as well go on now they've started.'
He turned to Pierre.
'Would you like to bathe, Pierre?'
The little boy in grey stared round-eyed at the English children.