How you do fidget!'
They passed all together out into the yard, the men in front, the two
children just behind, walking warily.
Then came the separation, yet none could say exactly how it was
accomplished. For separations are curious things at the best of times,
the forces that effect them as mysterious as wind that blows a pair of
butterflies across a field. Something equally delicate was at work.
One minute all four stood together by the fountain, and the next Daddy
was walking downhill towards the carpenter's house alone, while the
other three were already twenty metres up the street that led to the
belt of forest.
Jimbo, perhaps, was responsible for the deft manoeuvring. At any rate,
he walked beside his big cousin with the air of a successful aide-de-
camp. But Monkey, too, seemed flushed with victory, rolling along--her
rotundity ever suggested rolling rather than the taking of actual
steps--as if she led a prisoner.
'Don't bother your cousin, children,' their father's voice was heard
again faintly in the distance. Then the big shoulder of La Citadelle
hid him from view and hearing.
And so the sight was seen of these three, arm in arm, passing along
the village street in the twilight. Gygi saw them go and raised his
blue, peaked cap; and so did Henri Favre, standing in the doorway of
his little shop, as he weighed the possible value of the new customer
for matches, chocolate, and string--the articles English chiefly
bought; and likewise Alfred Sandoz, looking a moment through the
window of his cabaret, the Guillaume Tell, saw them go past like
shadows towards the woods, and observed to his carter friend across
the table, 'They choose queer times for expeditions, these English,
_ouah!_'
'It's their climate makes them like that,' put in his wife, a touch of
pity in her voice.
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