Page:Christopher Wren--the wages of virtue.djvu/56

22 peach? I should smile! Wonder the medicine-man didn't turn down some o' them chechaquos.…"

And, truly, the draft contained some very queer odd lots. By the side of the English gentleman stood a big fat German boy in knicker-bockers and jersey, bare-legged and wearing a pair of button-boots that had belonged to a woman in the days when they still possessed toe-caps. Pale face, pale hair, and pale eyes, conspired to give him an air of terror—the first seeming to have the hue of fright, the second to stand en brosse with fear, and the last to bulge like those of a hunted animal.

Presumably M. le Médicin-Major must have been satisfied that the boy was eighteen years of age, but, though tall and robust, he looked nearer fifteen—an illusion strengthened, doubtless, by the knickerbockers, bare calves, and button-boots. If he had enlisted in the Foreign Legion to avoid service in the Fatherland, he had quitted the frying-pan for a furnace seven times heated. Possibly he hoped to emulate Messieurs Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego. In point of fact, he was a deserter (driven to the desperate step of fleeing across the French frontier by a typical Prussian non-commissioned officer), and already wishing himself once more zwei jahriger in the happy Fatherland.

Already, to his German soul and stomach, the lager-bier of Munich, the sausage, zwieback, and kalte schnitzel of home, seemed things of the dim and distant past, and unattainable future.

Next to him stood a gnarled and knotted Spaniard, whose face appeared to be carven from his native mahogany, and whose ragged clothing—grimy, oily,