"
You should have seen them dash for the window. I suppose that their
native tongue sounded good to them so far from home.
"Where did you come from?" I asked.
"From up yonder--a place called La Fere," one of them replied.
"What regiment?" I asked.
"Any one else here speak English?" he questioned, running his eyes along
the faces thrust out of the windows.
I told him no one did.
"Well," he said, "we are all that is left of the North Irish Horse and a
regiment of Scotch Borderers."
"What are you doing here?"
"Retreating--and waiting for orders. How far are we from Paris?"
I told him about seventeen miles. He sighed, and remarked that he
thought they were nearer, and as the train started I had the idea in the
back of my head that these boys actually expected to retreat inside the
fortifications. La! la!
Instead of the half-hour the train usually takes to get up from here to
Paris, we were two hours.
I found Paris much more normal than when I was there two weeks ago,
though still quite unlike itself; every one perfectly calm and no one
with the slightest suspicion that the battle line was so near--hardly
more than ten miles beyond the outer forts.
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