"Only think, ma'am. Do but hear! All of us are ordered off from Fontainebleau to Verdun. Verdun! Why, that is where Mademoiselle de St. Roques lives. We shall see her again. And I shall like that, though I don't like going farther away from England. That is horrid. Everybody is saying what a shame it is! Must we go, do you think, Den? Verdun is a fortified town, they say, and we are to be in stricter keeping, all of us prisoners."
Roy liked to speak of himself as a prisoner, even while he chafed furiously against the restraints of imprisonment. He could not make up his mind to the indignity of being looked upon as too young to be worth detention. Thirteen years old!—with a Commission in His Majesty's Army already secured! Roy was very conscious of his prospective position. "I am quite as old already as lots of middies," he would declare, "and only two years younger than General Moore when he began to be a soldier."
"You should not startle your mother, Roy," the Colonel said gravely, as Mrs. Baron sat up, her eyes wide and terrified. "It is necessary sometimes to think of other people before yourself. You understand?"
"I'm sorry, sir; but is it true?" asked Roy, too much excited to be penitent for more than three seconds. "Are we really and truly going to Verdun?"
"It is true, unfortunately. Den and I were told this morning of the order at appel. But you should have waited until I spoke."
Roy began to see the nature of his blunder, too late for reticence.
"Then we really are going! I shall like to see Mademoiselle de St. Roques again, only I would rather, ever so much, be going home. Shall we do it by diligence, papa, or poste, or will you have a carriage? Only four of us, and they say we may do it any way we like."
Colonel Baron made up his mind to take the bull by the horns there and then. He would have preferred to tell his wife quietly, with no spectators, but since Roy had hurried matters on, he felt that it was best to speak out at once.
"I shall probably have a carriage for your mother and Denham and myself, Roy," he said slowly.
"And me!"