Page:Imre.pdf/47

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45

ture which seems to inflict a sort of nervous disease of the eyes... occasionally also of the imagination... on the average soldier of any rank and uniform, the world round. "Thanks... but I don't trouble myself much about looking-glasses, when I've once got my clothes on my back and am certain that my face isn't dirty!" was his reply to me one morning when I gave him an amused look because he had happened to plant his chair exactly in front of the biggest pier-glass in the K... Café. He never posed; never fussed as to his toilet, nor worried concerning the ultrafitting of his clothes, nor studied with anxiety details of his person. One day, another officer was lamenting the melancholy fact that baldness was gaining ground slyly, pitilessly, on the speaker's hyacinthine locks. He gave utterance to a sorrowful envy of Imre. "Pooh, pooh" returned Imre, hadnagy, scornfully, "It's in the family... and such a convenience in warm weather! I shall be bald as a cannon-shot by the time I am thirty!" He detested all jewellery in the way of masculine adornments, and wore