The poor centurion changed colour. The girl’s question brought up the difficulty which he knew had to be faced, but which he would gladly have put off as long as he could.
“We shall go to Gaul, certainly; where I cannot say,” he answered, after a long pause, and in a hesitating voice.
“Oh, how delightful!” cried the girl; “exactly the thing that Lucia and I have been longing for. And Rome? Surely we shall go to Rome, father? [pg 88]Are you not glad to hear it, mother? I am sure that we are all tired of this cold, foggy place.”
The mother said nothing. If she did not exactly see the whole of the situation, she had at least an housewife’s horror of a move. The poor father moved uneasily upon his chair.
“The legion will go,” he said, “but your mother and you——”
“Oh, Lucius,” cried the poor wife, “you do not, cannot mean that we are not to go with you!”
“Nothing is settled,” he replied, “it is true; but I am much troubled about it. You might go, though I do not like the idea of your following the camp; but these dear girls—and yet they cannot be separated from you.”
The unhappy wife saw the truth only too clearly. If the times had been quiet, she might herself have possibly accompanied the legion in its march southward; but even then she could not have taken her daughters with her, her daughters whom she never allowed to go within the precincts of the camp, except on the one day, the Emperor’s birthday, when all the officers’ families were expected to be present at the ceremony of saluting the Imperial likeness. And this had of late been omitted when it was difficult to say from day to day what Emperor the troops acknowledged. The centurion had spoken only too truly; the legion might go, but they must [pg 89]stay behind. She covered her face with her hands and wept.
“Lucia,” cried the elder girl to her sister, “we will enlist; we will take the oath; I should make just as good a soldier as many of the Briton lads they are filling up the cohorts with now; though you, I must allow, are a little too small,” she added, ruefully, as she looked at her sister’s plump little figure, too hopelessly feminine ever to admit the possibility of a disguise. “Cheer up, mother,” she went on, “we shall find a way out of the difficulty somehow.” And she threw her arms round the weeping woman, and kissed her repeatedly.
There was silence for a few minutes, broken at last by the timid, hesitating voice of the younger girl.