Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/49



HE corporal sat astride a cane-bottomed chair in front of the gendarme quarters at Pierrebuffière and smoked his pipe; slowly the smoke curled upwards in regular lines, forming circles which gradually expanded, quivered, and finally vanished in the warm air of this July evening.

Martial Tharaud had seen many similar circles of smoke act in just the same way above the cannon's mouth.

He was now taking life easily in his little garden, the head of a family, with a corporal's stripes on his sleeve, and wished for nothing better—not even to become sergeant, because then he would probably have to go to Eymoutiers, Saint-Léonard, or Limoges. He was fond of his little corner at Pierrebuffière, fond of those roses which he had grafted himself, and fond of that creeping plant which ran along the white walls of the house and hung in wreaths around the tin tricolour flag suspended over the door.

As the corporal smoked he watched some boys who, at a short distance from him, were playing upon a hillock at the game of pique-romme, in which they threw long pointed pieces of iron into the ground, as though throwing at a target. Occasionally he cried warningly to them: "Take care, there, youngsters; mind you don't run them into your feet!"

Then he turned round and looked over his shoulder through the open window at a pretty, dark-complexioned woman, still young, who was bustling about the kitchen where the pots and pans shone like silver; he smiled at her and said as he puffed away: "They are having a game, the little rascals!"

Then the woman, with bare arms—nice white arms, half covered with flour—came to the window-sill, put her jolly, energetic-looking face (red with the heat of the stove) out of the window and looked towards the boys, who were excitedly throwing their pieces of iron at the mark.

"Go along! there's no danger! Besides, it makes them skilful and brave!"

"And gives them an appetite for your clafoutis, Catissou!"

The clafoutis—a Limousin dish as solid