“Thank you, thank you, dear children,” I said, with bland heartiness one assumes--for no known reason--toward the offspring of strangers; and obliged to avail myself of their assistance (for want of practice makes it at all times difficult for me to get up from a flat surface, and my stiffness on this occasion turned the difficult into the impossible), I somehow was pulled on to my feet. “Thank you, thank you,” I said again, adding jestingly, “I expect I am too old to sit on the ground.” ^ “Yes,” said Jane. This was so unexpected that I could not repress a slight sensation of annoyance, which found its expression in sarcasm. “I am extremely obliged to you young ladies,” I said, sweeping off my Panama, “for extending your charitable support and assistance to such a poor old gentleman.” [Illustration: _The two nondescripts, who were passing, lingered to look_] “Oh,” said Jumps earnestly, too thick-skinned to feel sarcasm, “I’m used to it. I have to help Papa about. He’s very old too.” “Yet surely,” said I, tingeing my sarcasm with playfulness (but they were too thick-skinned even for playfulness), “surely not so old as I?” “About the same,” said Jumps, considering me gravely. “And how old,” said I, inquiring of Jane, for Jumps annoyed me too much, “may your friend’s excellent parent be?” “Oh, about sixty, or seventy, or eighty,” said she, indifferently. CHAPTER VIII “The children of England----” I remarked, when they had gone their way, their arms linked together, to Lord Sigismund who was hurrying past to the river with a bucket--but he interrupted me by shouting over his shoulder: “Will you stay and light the fire, or come with us and forage for food?” Light the fire? Why, what are women for? Even Hermann, my servant, would rebel if he instead of Clothilde had to light fires. But, on the other hand, forage? Go back across that immense field and walk from shop to shop on feet that had for some time past been unable to walk at all? And then return weighed down with the results? “Do you understand fires, Baron?” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, appearing suddenly behind me. “As much, I suppose, as intelligence unaided by experience does,” said I unwillingly. “Oh, but of course you do,” said she, putting a box of matches--one of those enormous English boxes that never failed to arouse my amused contempt, for they did not light a single fire or candle more than their handy little continental brethren--into my right hand, and the red handkerchiefful of sticks bought that morning into my left, “of course you do. You must have got quite used to them in the wars.” “What wars?” I asked sharply. “You surely do not imagine that I----” “Oh, were you too young for Sedan and all that?” she asked, as she crossed over the very long and very green grass toward a distant ditch and I found that I was expected to cross with her.