'We got close on five gallons left.
Get us to Angerville.'
'Okay,' the corporal said to Howard. 'Get the kids into the back and we'll 'op it.'
Howard looked round for his children.
They were not where he had left them; he looked round, and they were up the road with the German spy, who was crying miserably.
'Rose,' he shouted.
'Come on.
Bring the children.'
She called in a thin, piping voice: 'Il est blesse.'
'Come on,' he cried.
The children looked at him, but did not stir.
He hurried over to them.
'Why don't you come when I call you?'
Rose faced the old man, her little face crimson with anger.
'Somebody threw a stone at him and hit him.
I saw them do it.
It is not right, that.'
True enough, a sticky stream of blood was running down the back of the child's neck into his filthy clothes.
A sudden loathing for the town enveloped the old man.
He took his handkerchief and mopped at the wound.
La petite Rose said: 'It is not right to throw a stone at him, and a big woman, too, m'sieur.
This is a bad, dirty place to do a thing like that.'
Ronnie said: 'He's coming with us, Mr Howard.
He can sit on the other end of Bert's kitbag by the 'lectric motor.'
The old man said: 'He belongs here.
We can't take him away with us.'
But in his mind came the thought that it might be kind to do so.
'He doesn't belong here,' said Rose.
'Two days only he has been here.
The woman said so.'
There was a hurried, heavy step behind them.
'For Christ's sake,' said the corporal.
Howard turned to him.
'They're throwing stones at this child,' he said. He showed the man the cut on his neck.
'Who's throwing stones?'
'All the people in the village.
They think he's a German spy.'
'Who - 'im?' The corporal stared.
'He ain't more'n seven years old!'
'I saw the woman do it,' said Ronnie.
'That house there.
She threw a stone and did that.'
'My muckin' aunt,' the corporal said. He turned to Howard.
'Anyway, we got to beat it.'
'I know.' The old man hesitated.
'What'll we do?
Leave him here in this disgusting place?
Or bring him along with us?'
'Bring him along, mate, if you feel like it.
I ain't worried over the amount of spying that he'll do.'