Eager came out of a cottage as they passed down the street, and they all went on together.
"Oh, Charles," burst out the Little Lady, as she filled the cups, "we saw two such curious men on the shore as we were coming home----"
"Ah!"--for he always enjoyed her exuberance in the telling of her news. "Two heads each?--or was it smugglers now, or real bold buccaneers?"
"Jack thinks, by the cut of their jibs, they were Frenchmen, one an officer and the other his servant."
"Oh?"--with a sudden startled interest. "Frenchmen, eh? And what made you think they were Frenchmen, Jack, my boy?"
"They looked like it to me. They had long soldiers' cloaks on, and their caps were not English----"
"And they had rattling good horses, both of them," struck in the future cavalryman.
"And where were they going?"
"We didn't ask. We only stared, and they stared back. They were galloping along the shore towards Carne," said Jack.
"I We don't often see Frenchmen up this way nowadays." And thereafter he was not quite so briskly merry as usual, as though the Frenchmen were weighing on him.