“On to Arras!”
Billy made the grim soldiers smile with his enthusiasm.
When the car rolled into the quaint old town of Arras, the boys confessed that they had never seen quite the like of it before.
“There’s a building that I’d like to move to Bangor,” said Billy, pointing to the Hotel de Ville, one of the finest in France, with its Gothic façade rising upon seven arches of different sizes.
“There’s a lot of rare old houses here, I tell you,” asserted Henri, “but I never saw them until now, except on postcards. By the way, Billy, take a look at those and think of the days of Christopher Columbus.”
Henri referred to the Petite place and the Grande place, curious relics of the long gone days of Spanish rule, with their queer gables and old arcades resting on curiously shaped sand-stone columns.
“This is the town, you know,” advised Henri, “where Robespierre was born.”
“Humph! This war has kicked up a bigger muss in France than ‘Roby’ ever did.”
Billy was not inclined to concede that anything had ever created a stir ahead of that in which he was mixing.
The stir of the next day was, indeed, something to be remembered. Some of the biggest of the German guns were brought into action.