Sheila said fretfully: 'My feet hurt.'
She was obviously tired out.
He picked her up and put her in the pram, and put Pierre in with her.
To Pierre he gave the chocolate that had been promised to him earlier in the day, and then all the other children had to have a piece of chocolate too.
That refreshed them and made them cheerful for a while, and the old man pushed the pram wearily ahead.
It was essential that they should stop soon for the night.
He stopped at the next farm, left the pram with the children in the road, and went into the court-yard to see if it was possible for them to find a bed.
There was a strange stillness in the place.
No dog sprang out to bark at him.
He called out, and stood expectant in the evening light, but no one answered him.
He tried the door to the farmhouse, and it was locked.
He went into the cowhouse, but no animals were there.
Two hens scratched on the midden; otherwise there was no sign of life.
The place was deserted.
As on the previous night, they slept in the hay loft.
There were no blankets to be had this time, but Howard, searching round for some sort of coverlet, discovered a large, sail-like cover, used possibly to thatch a rick.
He dragged this into the loft and arranged it double on the hay, laying the children down between its folds.
He had expected trouble with them, excitement and fretfulness, but they were too tired for that.
All five of them were glad to lie down and rest; in a short time they were all asleep.
Howard lay resting on the hay near them, tired to death.
In the last hour he had taken several nips of brandy for the weariness and weakness that he was enduring; now as he lay on the hay in the deserted farm fatigue came soaking out of him in great waves.
He felt that they were in a desperate position.
There could be no hope now of getting through to England, as he once had hoped.
The German front was far ahead of them; by now it might have reached to Brittany itself.
All France was overrun.
Exposure might come at any time, must come before so very long.
It was inevitable.
His own French, though good enough, was spoken with an English accent, as he knew well.
The only hope of escaping detection would be to hide for a while until some plan presented itself, to lie up with the children in the house of some French citizen.
But he knew no one in this part of France that he could go to.
And any way, no family would take them in.
If he did know anybody, it would hardly be fair to plant himself on them.
He lay musing bitterly on the future, only half-awake.
It was not quite correct to say that he knew nobody.
He did know, very slightly, one family at Chartres.
They were people called Rouget - no, Rougand - Rougeron; that was it, Rougeron.
They came from Chartres.
He had met them at Cidoton eighteen months before, when he had been there with John for the skiing.
The father was a colonel in the army; Howard wondered vaguely what had become of him.
The mother had been typically fat and French, pleasant enough in a very quiet way.
The daughter had ski'd well; closing his eyes in the doze of oncoming sleep the old man could see her flying down the slopes behind John, in a flurry of snow.
She had had fair hair which she wore short and rather elaborately dressed, in the French style.
He had seen a good deal of the father.
They had played draughts together in the evening over a Pernod, and had pondered together whether war would come.
The old man began to consider Rougeron seriously.
If by some freak of chance he should be in Chartres, there might yet be hope for them.
He thought that Rougeron might help.
At any rate, they would get good advice from him.
Howard became aware at this point of how much, how very much he wanted to talk to some adult, to discuss their difficulties and make plans.
The more he thought of Rougeron, the more he yearned to talk to someone of that sort, frankly and without reserve.