"All fancy, my dear child, all fancy," her father informed her. "When I was a young lieutenant I was once stationed at a miserable hole which Satan, if he likes, may utterly destroy; at last a station was built, and day after day we strolled up there and felt as jolly and as comfortable in the miserable little waiting-room as we had never felt before. If we had not had that station, and had not been able to go to the station daily, I really do believe we could not have endured the life for long; we should have gone out of our minds. When we had done our daily military duty the day's work was over for us, then there was only one thing to be settled: when and how were we to go to bed? Should we go early and sober, or late and drunk? Now we had a higher object in life; we must go and see the arrival and departure of the trains, and we did this quite as conscientiously as we did our other duties. You can't imagine the joy when one of us by chance discovered an acquaintance in the train; whether he liked it or not he was hauled out of the carriage, and if we could not do it otherwise we used force. And once we had captured a guest, with much craft and cunning, we didn't let him go easily, I can assure you. He was, to a certain extent, placed under military supervision so that he could not escape. Our visitor had perfect freedom; he could do whatever he liked, only he must not go to the station. When at last he really had to go away, and when he had showed us most unmistakably that he really could not stay away longer, we only let him off by paying huge toll. Ha! ha! We were nothing but highwaymen; but, good gracious, what on earth could one do in such a dull hole of a place?"