Twice during the meal an orderly came with a
message which he had taken off a field telephone in a little pigsty of
logs and straw fifty feet away from us; but the general each time merely
canted his head to hear what the whispered word might be and went on
eating. There was no clattering in of couriers, no hurried dispatching
of orders this way and that. Only, just before we finished with the
meal, he got up and walked away a few paces, and there two of his aides
joined him and the three of them confabbed together earnestly for a
couple of minutes or so. While so engaged they had the air about them
of surgeons preparing to undertake an operation and first consulting
over the preliminary details. Or perhaps it would be truer to say they
looked like civil engineers discussing the working-out of an undertaking
regarding which there was interest but no uneasiness. Assuredly they
behaved not in the least as a general and aides would behave in a story
book or on the stage, and when they were through they came back for
their coffee and their cigars to the table where the rest of us sat.
Pages:
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339