this, she kept stopping all the time to tie her shoe or to do up her dress, so that the van advanced more slowly than the rear guard.
"Gesima, I give you a bad mark in deportment," Hänsli concluded in an angry tone. After that he let the march go on anyhow.
Although it was still early, hardly nine o'clock, the sun was bright and hot. Gradually the infantryman's cartridge-box began to bother him, not that it was too heavy, but because the leather strap rubbed his shoulder and made him uncomfortable. So he pulled off the troublesome thing and hung it on Gesima's shoulder. All she did was to draw herself together so as to make herself thin and she slipped through the strap like a little fish through a net, the cartridge-box falling to the earth. This proceeding was repeated several times, till Hänsli said threateningly, "If you play that trick again, Gesima, I will leave the cartridge-box on the ground."
"All right, leave it there," she answered, letting it fall again, and Hänsli marched on looking unconcerned, as if he had nothing to do with that black piece of luggage. But he kept peering furtively back at it all the same. A peasant boy, with an expression of astonishment on his face, finally picked up the singular thing, and then Hänsli ran back, shouting at him in protest, and wrested his property out of the boy's hands. But the next time he tried to make a pack animal out of the little girl, his brother interfered angrily, remarking that Hänsli had better carry his own cartridge-box. The infantry soldier was not at all inclined to tolerate this domineering tone from a simple artilleryman, and a heated altercation followed, illustrated with various zoölogical allusions which were not
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