["OUR HERO."]
A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO.
By AGNES GIBERNE, Author of "Sun, Moon and Stars," "The Girl at the Dower House," etc.
CHAPTER V.
A MILITARY NURSE.
Colonel Baron might not confess the fact in so many words, but before he had been three days in Paris, he was sorely regretting his own action in taking Roy across the Channel.
Had he admitted that it really was his wife's persistency, overbearing his better judgment, which had settled the matter, he might have been tempted to blame her. But even to himself he did not admit this. Rather than confess that he had been managed by a woman, he preferred to look upon the mistake as entirely his own. Moreover, he was too devoted a husband to condemn openly any fault in his wife. She was, of course, a woman, and as such he would have counted it infra dig. on his part to have been controlled by her; but she was also in his eyes the fairest and most charming woman that ever had lived; and the one thing on earth before which the Colonel's courage failed was the sight of tears in his Harriette's large grey eyes.
That they should return home, as at first proposed, by the end of a fortnight, unless they were willing to leave the boy behind, was impossible; and neither of them would for a moment contemplate that idea. No matter how well Roy might get on, he would be a prisoner beyond the fortnight. Small-pox is a disease which "gangs its ain gait," and makes haste for no man's convenience. Even after actual recovery, there would still be need for quarantine.