Ordinarily Uhlans would have followed behind the
bicycle men, but this time a regiment of Brunswick Hussars formed the
advance guard, riding four abreast and making a fine show, what with
their laced gray jackets and their lanes of nodding lances, and their
tall woolly busbies, each with its grinning brass death's-head set into
the front of it.
There was a blithe young officer who insisted on wheeling out of the
line and halting us, and passing the time of day with us. I imagine he
wanted to exercise his small stock of English words. Well, it needed
the exercise. The skull-and-bones poison label on his cap made a
wondrous contrast with the smiling eyes and the long, humorous,
wrinkled-up nose below it.
"A miserable country," he said, with a sweep of his arm which
comprehended all Northwestern Europe, from the German border to the sea
--"so little there is to eat! My belly--she is mostly empty always. But
on the yesterday I have the much great fortune. I buy me a swine--what
you call him?--a pork? Ah, yes; a pig.
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