Rose Adding had lingered for the incident with March, but they now pushed on, and came up with the others at the end of the bridge, where they found them in question whether they had not better take a carriage and drive to the foot of the hill before they began their climb.  March thanked them, but said he was keeping up the terms of his cure, and was getting in all the walking he could.  Rose begged his mother not to include him in the driving party; he protested that he was feeling so well, and the walk was doing him good.  His mother consented, if he would promise not to get tired, and then she mounted into the two-spanner which had driven instinctively up to their party when their parley began, and General Triscoe took the place beside her, while Kenby, with smiling patience, seated himself in front.

Rose kept on talking with March about Wurzburg and its history, which it seemed he had been reading the night before when he could not sleep.  He explained, “We get little histories of the places wherever we go.  That’s what Mr. Kenby does, you know.”

“Oh, yes,” said March.

“I don’t suppose I shall get a chance to read much here,” Rose continued, “with General Triscoe in the room.  He doesn’t like the light.”

“Well, well.  He’s rather old, you know.  And you musn’t read too much, Rose.  It isn’t good for you.”

“I know, but if I don’t read, I think, and that keeps me awake worse.  Of course, I respect General Triscoe for being in the war, and getting wounded,” the boy suggested.

“A good many did it,” March was tempted to say.

The boy did not notice his insinuation.  “I suppose there were some things they did in the army, and then they couldn’t get over the habit.  But General Grant says in his ‘Life’ that he never used a profane expletive.”

“Does General Triscoe?”

Rose answered reluctantly, “If anything wakes him in the night, or if he can’t make these German beds over to suit him—­”

“I see.”  March turned his face to hide the smile which he would not have let the boy detect.  He thought best not to let Rose resume his impressions of the general; and in talk of weightier matters they found themselves at that point of the climb where the carriage was waiting for them.  From this point they followed an alley through ivied, garden walls, till they reached the first of the balustraded terraces which ascend to the crest of the hill where the church stands.  Each terrace is planted with sycamores, and the face of the terrace wall supports a bass-relief commemorating with the drama of its lifesize figures the stations of the cross.