“You three elder children may go where you will within the camp. Few children are privileged to see the camp of Caesar. The student and the smaller girl-child will remain here with me.”
Nobody liked this; but when Caesar said a thing that thing was so, and there was an end to it. So the three went.
Left alone with Jane and the learned gentleman, the great Roman found it easy enough to turn them inside out. But it was not easy, even for him, to make head or tail of the insides of their minds when he had got at them.
The learned gentleman insisted that the whole thing was a dream, and refused to talk much, on the ground that if he did he would wake up.
Jane, closely questioned, was full of information about railways, electric lights, balloons, men-of-war, cannons, and dynamite.
“And do they fight with swords?” asked the General.
“Yes, swords and guns and cannons.”
Caesar wanted to know what guns were.
“You fire them,” said Jane, “and they go bang, and people fall down dead.”
“But what are guns like?”