Mrs. Baron's large languid grey eyes opened rather more widely than their wont.
"My dear Harriette, wake up, I entreat of you. Pray listen to me. Doubtless all the world is going to France. Nothing more likely, since half the world consists of idiots, and another half of madmen. That is small reason why you two need comport yourselves like either."
"Do you really suppose there will be war again so soon?" asked Mrs. Baron incredulously.
"Do I suppose? Why, everybody knows it. Jim knows it. Your husband knows it. There can't be any reasonable doubt about the matter. The treaty of Amiens is practically at an end already. Nap has broken his pledges again and again. And this last demand of his--why, nothing could be more iniquitous."
"Dear me; has he made any fresh demand?" Mrs. Baron's eyes went in appeal to her husband, for she had no very great faith in Mrs. Bryce's judgment. The Colonel had no chance of responding.
"Even you can't surely have forgot that, my dear Harriette. He desires that we should give over to his tender mercies the unfortunate Bourbon Princes, who have fled to us for refuge: and no doubt in the end he would demand all the refugees of the Revolution. He might as well demand England herself. And he will demand that, in no long time. 'Tis an open secret that he is already making preparations for the invasion of our country."
"Boney doesn't believe that England, single-handed, will dare to oppose him," remarked Mr. Bryce. "He thinks a nation of seventeen million inhabitants is certain to go down before a nation of forty millions."
"Let him come, and he'll soon learn his mistake," declared Mr. Bryce's valiant better half. "But you, Harriette--with public affairs in this state--you positively intend to let your crazy husband drag you across the Channel?"
"But I do not think my husband crazy, and I wish very much to go," she said, slightly pouting. "I have never been out of England. The wars have always hindered me."
"And you absolutely mean to take the young ones too!"
"We intend to take Roy," the Colonel said, as his wife's eyes once more appealed to him. Children in those days seldom travelled, unless as a matter of necessity; therefore the Colonel's voice was proportionately determined.