Then, while he drank his tea, he told me why he felt a certain indulgence for them--these boys who were hurried away from England without having a chance to take leave of their families, or even to warn them that they were going. "This is the first time that they have had a chance to talk to a woman who speaks their tongue since they left England; I can't begrudge it to them and they know it. But discipline is discipline, and if I had let such a breach of it pass they would have no respect for me. They understand. They had no business to put their guns out of their hands. What would they have done if the detachment of Uhlans we are watching for had dashed up that hill--as they might have?" Before I could answer or remark on this startling speech there was a tremendous explosion, which brought me to my feet, with the inevitable,-- "What's that?" He took a long pull at his tea before he replied quietly,--"Another division across the Marne." Then he went on as if there had been no interruption:-- "This Yorkshire regiment has had hard luck. Only one other regiment in the Expedition has had worse. They have marched from the Belgian frontier, and they have been in four big actions in the retreat--Mons, Cambrai, Saint-Quentin, and La Fere. Saint-Quentin was pretty rough luck. We went into the trenches a full regiment. We came out to retreat again with four hundred men--and I left my younger brother there." I gasped; I could not find a word to say. He did not seem to feel it necessary that I should. He simply winked his eyelids, stiffened his stern mouth, and went right on; and I forgot all about the Uhlans:-- "At La Fere we lost our commissary on the field. It was burned, and these lads have not had a decent feed since--that was three days ago. We have passed through few towns since, and those were evacuated,--drummed out and fruit from the orchards on the roadsides is about all they have had--hardly good feed for a marching army in such hot weather. Besides, we were moving pretty fast--but in order--to get across the Marne, toward which we have been drawing the Germans, and in every one of these battles we have been fighting with one man to their ten." I asked him where the Germans were. "Can't say," he replied. "And the French?" "No idea. We've not seen them--yet. We understood that we were to be reinforced at Saint-Quentin by a French detachment at four o'clock. They got there at eleven--the battle was over--and lost. But these boys gave a wonderful account of themselves, and in spite of the disaster retreated in perfect order."