"And you're content to put yourselves into the clutches of that miserable Boney!"
"My dear madam, the First Consul does not wage war on unoffending travellers."
"Boney doesn't care what he does, so long as he can get his own way."
"He will at least act in accordance with the laws of civilised nations."
"Not he! Boney makes his own laws to suit himself."
"Well, well, my dear madam, we view these things differently. I have made up my mind. My wife has never been into France, and we may not have another opportunity for many years to come."
"Likely enough—while the Corsican lives!" muttered Mrs. Bryce.
The end window opened upon a verandah, and just outside this window, which had been thrown wide open, for it was an unusually hot spring day, a boy lay flat upon the ground, shaping a small wooden boat with his penknife. At the first mention of his name, a fair curly head popped up and popped down again. A recurrence of the word "Roy" brought up the head a second time, and two wide grey eyes stared eagerly over the low sill into the room. He might have been seen easily enough, but people were too busy to look that way. Then again the head vanished, and its owner lay motionless, apparently listening. After which he rolled away, jumped up, and scampered to the schoolroom at the back of the house.
It was a good-sized house, with a nice garden, in the outskirts of London; a much more limited London than the great metropolis of our day, though even then Englishmen were wont to describe it as "vast." Trafalgar Square and Regent Street were unbuilt; Pimlico consisted of bare rough ground, and Moorfields of genuine swampy fields; and the City was still a fashionable place of residence.
Roy Baron was a handsome lad, well set-up, straight and spirited, though small for his age, and, as Mrs. Bryce had intimated, childish in appearance. He had on a blue cloth jacket, with trousers and waistcoat of the same material. Knickerbockers were unknown. Children and older boys wore loose trousers, while tights and uncovered stockings were reserved for grown-up gentlemen. In a few weeks Roy would exchange his cloth waistcoat and trousers for linen ditto, either white or striped. Boys' hair was not cropped so closely in the year 1803 as in the Nineties; and a mass of tight curls clustered over Roy's head.