"You think of the boys drawn up in line on the drill-ground, and the echo behind the hill."
"Do you know Almoda?" he exclaimed, with a face as white as a sheet.
"I do."
This was too much for him. We had paused at the hotel entrance, and he intended, I knew, to take a polite leave of me; but I had done a dangerous thing in conjuring up the old familiar scenes, and mumbling something in his throat, and giving one tug to his hat, he ran as nimbly down the street as if he were a lean coyote from the hills of his native State.
Four weeks later I asked myself why I was lingering in Orléans. I had seen all the souvenirs of Joan of Arc; I had talked with the peasants and shopkeepers till I was tired; I agreed thoroughly with my guide-book that Orléans is a city sadly lacking in animation; and yet I stayed on; I stayed on because I was engaged in a bit of character study, I told my note-book; stayed on because my presence afforded some consolation to a struggling, unhappy boy, I told my conscience.
The boy was dying of homesickness. He did not enter into the life of the sleepy French city. "This is a good enough country," he said, wearily, "but it isn't mine. I want America, and it seems to me all these priests and soldiers and citizens are acting. I can't think they were born speaking French."
However, it was only at rare intervals that he complained. Away in America he had a father who had set the high standard of duty before him,—a father who would not encourage him to flag.
On the Fourth of July, Mrs. Greyshield was giving a reception—not on account of the day, for she had not a spark of patriotism, but because she was shortly to leave Orléans for the seashore. Gerald was also giving a reception, his a smaller one, prepared for in the face of almost insurmountable difficulties, for he received no encouragement from his mother in his patriotic schemes.
His only pleasure in life was in endeavouring to make his little brother and sister as patriotic as himself, and with ill-concealed dismay he confided to me the fear that they were forgetting their native land.
About the middle of the afternoon I joined him and the children in a small, gaily decorated arbour at the foot of the garden. Shortly after I arrived, Mrs. Greyshield, accompanied by a number of her guests, swept down upon us. The French officers and their wives and a number of English residents surrounded the arbour.