She wore her hair in the same close curled French manner; she wore a grey cloth skirt and a dark blue jumper, with a black scarf at the neck.
She said at last. 'My father is away from home.
I - I remember you very well, monsieur.'
He said easily in French: 'It is very charming of you to say so, mademoiselle.
My name is Howard.'
'I know that.'
'Will monsieur le colonel be back today?'
She said: 'He has been gone for three months, Monsieur Howard.
He was near Metz.
That is the last we have heard.'
He had expected as much, but the disappointment was no less keen.
He hesitated and then drew back.
'I am so sorry,' he said.
'I had hoped to see monsieur le colonel, as I was in Chartres.
You have my sympathy, mademoiselle.
I will not intrude any further on your anxiety.'
She said: 'Is it - is it anything that I could discuss with you, Monsieur Howard?'
He got a queer impression from her manner that she was pleading, trying to detain him at the door.
He could not burden a girl and her mother with his troubles; they had troubles of their own to face.
'It is nothing, mademoiselle,' he said.
'Merely a little personal matter that I wanted to talk over with your father."
She drew herself up and faced him, looking him in the eyes.
'I understand that you wish to see my father, Monsieur Howard,' she said quietly.
'But he is away - we do not know where. And I... I am not a child.
I know very well what you have come to talk about.
We can talk of this together, you and I.'
She drew back from the door.
'Will you not come in and sit down?' she said.
Chapter 7
He turned and motioned to the children.
Then he glanced at the girl, and caught an expression of surprise, bewilderment, on her face.
There are rather a lot of us, I'm afraid,' he said apologetically.
She said: 'But... I do not understand, Monsieur Howard.
Are these your children?'
He smiled.
'I'm looking after them.
They aren't really mine.'
He hesitated and then said: 'I am in a position of some difficulty, mademoiselle.'
'Oh...'
'I wished to talk it over with your father.'
He wrinkled his brows in perplexity.
'Did you think that it was something different?'
She said, hastily: 'No, monsieur - not at all.'
And then she swung round arid called: 'Maman!
Come quickly; here is Monsieur Howard, from Cidoton!'
The little woman that Howard remembered came bustling out; the old man greeted her ceremoniously.
Then for a few minutes he stood with the children pressed close round him in the little salon of the flat, trying to make the two women understand his presence with them.
It was not an easy task.
The mother gave it up. 'Well, here they are,' she said, content to let the why and wherefore pass.
'Have they had dejeuner?