“Which I can,” Dorothea assured her.

“Well, Miss, I am sure I envy you; for ever since that poor French Captain Fioupi hanged himself from Mary Odling’s bacon-rack, two years ago the first of this very next month, I haven’t been able to look at a bit.”

“Poor gentleman!  Why did he do it?”

“The Lord knows, Miss.  But they said it was home-sickness.”

From the street came the voices of Captain Fioupi’s compatriots, merry at their work.  Dorothea had scarcely begun breakfast before her brothers entered, and she had to pour out tea for them.  Narcissus took his seat at once.  Endymion stood stamping his feet and warming his hands by the fire.  He bent and with his finger flicked out a crust of snow from between his breeches and the tops of his riding-boots.  It fell on the hearthstone and sputtered.

“The roads,” he announced, are not very bad beyond the bridge.  That is the worst spot, and I have sent down a gang to clear it.  Our guests ought to be able to depart before noon, though I won’t answer for the road Yeovil Way.  One carrier—­Allworthy—­has come through to the bridge, but says he passed Solomon’s van in a drift about four miles back, this side of the Cheriton oak.  He reports Bayfield Hill safe enough; but that I discovered for myself.”

“It seems quite a treat for them,” Dorothea remarked.

His eyebrows went up.

“The guests, do you mean?”

He turned to the fire and picked up the tongs.

She laughed.

“No, I mean the prisoners; I was listening to their voices.  Just now they were throwing snowballs.”

Endymion dropped the tongs with a clatter; picked them up, set them in place, and faced the room again with a flush which might have come from stooping over the fire.

“Come to breakfast, dear,” said Dorothea, busy with the tea-urn.  “I have a small plan I want your permission for, and your help.  It is about the prisoners.  General Rochambeau and M. Raoul—­”

“Are doubtless prepared to teach me my business,” snapped Endymion, who seemed in bad humour this morning.

“No—­but listen, dear!  They praise you warmly.  For whom but my brother would these poor men have worked as they did upon the Orange Room—­ and all to show their gratitude?  But it appears the worst part of captivity is its tedium and the way it depresses the mind; one sees that it must be.  They dread Sundays most of all.  And I said I would speak to you, and if any way could be found—­”

“My dear Dorothea,” Endymion slipped his hands beneath his coat-tails and stood astraddle, “I have not often to request you, to mind your own affairs; but really when it comes to making a promise in my name—­”

“Not a promise.”

“May I ask you if you seriously propose to familiarise Axcester with all the orgies of a Continental Sabbath?  Already the prisoners spend Sunday in playing chess, draughts, cards, dominoes; practices which I connive at, only insisting that they are kept out of sight, but from which I endeavour to wean them—­those at least who have a taste for music—­by encouraging them to, take part in our Church services.”