World War, 1914-1918 -- Gift books; World War, 1914-1918 -- Miscellanea
"What funny tin-pot things they look!" said Little Yeogh Wough. "Now I
know why all the toy ships we have that are made in Germany never look
a bit like ours. They don't look so professional, somehow. Perhaps it's
because we're not used to them. I hope they'll let us go on board them."
"Perhaps they will, as there are five or six members of Parliament among
us and the head of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland
Yard," I said quite confidently.
But it was notified to us early by the Kiel authorities that the two
warships were, as one might say, in déshabille, and not tidy enough and
trim enough to be inspected. So we had to content ourselves with walking
about the town.
Little Yeogh Wough took a snapshot of the _Hohenzollern_ from the jetty,
and then walked along with pride and satisfaction on his handsome face
because he had managed to do this without attracting anybody's notice.
Then we turned up the long main street and saw a good many pretty villas
that were charming enough to make one feel one could live in them quite
comfortably for two or three months of the summer.
"It is a very nice place," I said, as we passed the last of these
tree-embowered villas and began to walk up the hilly main street where
the shops begin. "Here's your tobacco shop, by the way."
I stayed outside on the pavement while Little Yeogh Wough went in with
his father. When they came out a German officer came out also, treated
me to a long, close look and swung on his way.
"He stared hard at me in the shop and then said: 'You're English, are
you?'" the boy of my heart informed me. "I told him I was, and he looked
hard at me all over again. I felt quite glad that I'd come out without
my glasses on."
I felt glad, too, as I looked at his bright face.
How queerly white his lucky lock showed in the sunshine! Surely nothing
very bad could ever happen to him in life when he had a lock like that!
"I'm sorry to have to say it, but this old watchmaker fellow here has
put my watch right twice as well as an ordinary watchmaker in this sort
of town at home in England would do it, and has done it in half the
time, into the bargain," his father said presently, emerging from
another little shop. "It's astonishing how capable these Germans are.
It's a pity they aren't a little better at sanitation. What awful smells
there are all over this town!"
This was true. We had been worried by stenches ever since we had begun
to walk up the hilly street.
On the way back two small incidents occurred. The first was that Little
Yeogh Wough nearly got into serious trouble by taking a photograph of
half a dozen street urchins, and the second was that we passed a
battalion of soldiers marching with such regularity that the whole mass
of them was like one huge moving machine. We stopped and watched them go
by, never dreaming of what was coming to us and to them in the very near
future.
Ah, Heaven! If we could have foreseen the thing that was coming!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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