‘Is there going to be a battle?’ panted Harold, hardly able to keep up for excitement.
‘Of course there is,’ I replied. ‘We’re just in time. Come on!’
Perhaps I ought to have known better; and yet——? The pigs and poultry, with whom we chiefly consorted, could instruct us little concerning the peace that lapped in these latter days our seagirt realm. In the schoolroom we were just now dallying with the Wars of the Roses; and did not legends of the country-side inform us how cavaliers had once galloped up and down these very lanes from their quarters in the village? Here, now, were soldiers unmistakable; and if their business was not fighting, what was it? Sniffing the joy of battle, we followed hard in their tracks.
‘Won’t Edward be sorry,’ puffed Harold, ‘that he’s begun that beastly Latin?’
It did, indeed, seem hard. Edward, the most martial spirit of us all, was drearily conjugating amo (of all verbs!) between four walls, while Selina, who ever thrilled ecstatic to a red coat, was struggling with the uncouth German tongue. ‘Age,’ I reflected, ‘carries its penalties.’
It was a grievous disappointment to us that the troop passed through the village unmolested. Every cottage, I pointed out to my companions, ought to have been loopholed, and strongly held. But no opposition was offered to the soldiers who, indeed, conducted themselves with a recklessness and a want of precaution that seemed simply criminal.
At the last cottage a transitory gleam of common sense flickered across me, and, turning on Charlotte, I sternly ordered her back. The small maiden, docile but exceedingly dolorous, dragged reluctant feet homewards, heavy at heart that she was to behold no stout fellows slain that day; but Harold and I held steadily on, expecting every instant to see the environing hedges crackle and spit forth the leaden death.
‘Will they be Indians?’ asked my brother (meaning the enemy) ‘or Roundheads, or what?’
I reflected. Harold always required direct straightforward answers—not faltering suppositions.