In vain did Aurelle endeavour to find
books for the Infant. French novels bored him; only the elder Dumas and Alphonse Daudet found favour in his eyes. Dundas would buy his seventeenth electric lamp, stop a few minutes on the doorstep to play with Germaine's black dog Dick, and then say good-bye, giving her hand a long squeeze and going away perfectly happy in the thought that he had done his duty and gone on the spree in France in the correct manner.
"A nice boy, your friend—but he is rather shy," she used to say.
On Sundays she went for walks along the river with an enormous mother and ungainly sisters, escorted gravely by Dundas. The mess did not approve of these rustic idylls.
"I saw him sitting beside her in a field," said Colonel Parker, "and his horse was tied to a tree. I think it's disgusting."
"It's shameful," said the padre.
"I'll speak to him about it," said the general, "it's a disgrace to the mess."
Aurelle tried to speak up for his friend.
"Maybe," said the doctor, "pleasure is a right in France, but in England it's a crime. With you, Aurelle, when girls see you taking a lady-friend out, their opinion of you goes up. In London, on the other hand——"
"Do you mean to say, doctor, that the English never flirt?"