“No,” said Mr. The Englishman, glancing down at the Barber’s, “he is not there at present.  There’s the child, though.”

A mere mite of a girl stood on the steps of the Barber’s shop, looking across the Place.  A mere baby, one might call her, dressed in the close white linen cap which small French country children wear (like the children in Dutch pictures), and in a frock of homespun blue, that had no shape except where it was tied round her little fat throat.  So that, being naturally short and round all over, she looked, behind, as if she had been cut off at her natural waist, and had had her head neatly fitted on it.

“There’s the child, though.”

To judge from the way in which the dimpled hand was rubbing the eyes, the eyes had been closed in a nap, and were newly opened.  But they seemed to be looking so intently across the Place, that the Englishman looked in the same direction.

“O!” said he presently.  “I thought as much.  The Corporal’s there.”

The Corporal, a smart figure of a man of thirty, perhaps a thought under the middle size, but very neatly made,—­a sunburnt Corporal with a brown peaked beard,—­faced about at the moment, addressing voluble words of instruction to the squad in hand.  Nothing was amiss or awry about the Corporal.  A lithe and nimble Corporal, quite complete, from the sparkling dark eyes under his knowing uniform cap to his sparkling white gaiters.  The very image and presentment of a Corporal of his country’s army, in the line of his shoulders, the line of his waist, the broadest line of his Bloomer trousers, and their narrowest line at the calf of his leg.

Mr. The Englishman looked on, and the child looked on, and the Corporal looked on (but the last-named at his men), until the drill ended a few minutes afterwards, and the military sprinkling dried up directly, and was gone.  Then said Mr. The Englishman to himself, “Look here!  By George!” And the Corporal, dancing towards the Barber’s with his arms wide open, caught up the child, held her over his head in a flying attitude, caught her down again, kissed her, and made off with her into the Barber’s house.

Now Mr. The Englishman had had a quarrel with his erring and disobedient and disowned daughter, and there was a child in that case too.  Had not his daughter been a child, and had she not taken angel-flights above his head as this child had flown above the Corporal’s?

“He’s a “—­National Participled—­“fool!” said the Englishman, and shut his window.

But the windows of the house of Memory, and the windows of the house of Mercy, are not so easily closed as windows of glass and wood.  They fly open unexpectedly; they rattle in the night; they must be nailed up.  Mr. The Englishman had tried nailing them, but had not driven the nails quite home.  So he passed but a disturbed evening and a worse night.