They were soon seated at a well-spread table--waited upon by the daughter of the family--while their host and hostess sat and chatted with them, as to their corps, while the meal went on.
"Excuse another remark upon your personal appearance," the lady said, smiling, "but two of you look more like Alsatians than French. You have the fair complexion and brown, wavy hair. You do not look like Frenchmen."
"Nor are we," Ralph laughed. "My brother and myself, although French born, are actually English. Our father is an English officer, but our mother is French and, as you see, we take after him rather than her."
"But I wonder that, as your father is English, he lets you go out upon this expedition--which is very perilous."
"We wished to go--that is, we thought it was our duty," Ralph said; "and although they were very sad at our leaving, they both agreed with us."
"I wish all Frenchmen were animated by the same feeling," their host said warmly. "Your gallant example should shame hundreds of thousands of loiterers and skulkers.
"You speak French perfectly. I should have had no idea that you were anything but French--or rather, from the way you speak German, that you were Alsatian."
"We have lived in France all our lives, except for two years which we passed in Germany; and two years at one time, together with one or two shorter visits, in England."
"And do you speak English as well as French?"
"Oh yes, we always speak English at home. Our father made a rule that we should always do so; as he said it would be an immense disadvantage to us, when we returned to England, if we had the slightest French accent. Our mother now speaks English as purely and correctly as our father."