And then Leonidas explained all about it to her: how his father had
brought him last year to Europe and had put him to school at Paris;
but when the war broke out, and most of the stranger scholars were
taken away, no orders came about him, because his father was a
merchant and was away from home, so that no one ever knew whether
the letters had reached him.

So Leonidas had gone on at school without many tasks to learn, to be
sure, but not very comfortable: it was so cold, and there was no wood
to burn; and he disliked eating horses and cats and rats, quite as
much as Coralie did, though he was not in a part of the town where
so many shells from the cannons came in.

At last when Lucy's uncle and some other good gentlemen with the red
cross on their sleeves, obtained leave to enter Paris and take some
relief to the poor, sick people in the hospitals, the people Leonidas
was with, told the gentleman that there was a little American left
behind in their house.

Mr. Seaman, which was Uncle Joe's name, went to see about him, and
found that he had once known his father. So, after a great deal of
trouble, it had been managed that the boy should be allowed to leave
the city. He had been driven in a coach, he told Lucy, with some
more Americans and English, and with flags with stars and stripes
or else Union Jacks all over it; and whenever they came to a French
sentry, or afterwards to a Prussian, they were stopped till he called
an officer who looked at their papers and let them go on.

Mr. Seaman had taken charge of Leonidas, and given him the best