white linen cap which small French country children wear (like the
children in Dutch pictures), and in a frock of homespun blue, that had no
shape except where it was tied round her little fat throat. So that,
being naturally short and round all over, she looked, behind, as if she
had been cut off at her natural waist, and had had her head neatly fitted
on it.

"There's the child, though."

To judge from the way in which the dimpled hand was rubbing the eyes, the
eyes had been closed in a nap, and were newly opened. But they seemed to
be looking so intently across the Place, that the Englishman looked in
the same direction.

"O!" said he presently. "I thought as much. The Corporal's there."

The Corporal, a smart figure of a man of thirty, perhaps a thought under
the middle size, but very neatly made,--a sunburnt Corporal with a brown
peaked beard,--faced about at the moment, addressing voluble words of
instruction to the squad in hand. Nothing was amiss or awry about the
Corporal. A lithe and nimble Corporal, quite complete, from the
sparkling dark eyes under his knowing uniform cap to his sparkling white
gaiters. The very image and presentment of a Corporal of his country's
army, in the line of his shoulders, the line of his waist, the broadest
line of his Bloomer trousers, and their narrowest line at the calf of his
leg.

Mr. The Englishman looked on, and the child looked on, and the Corporal
looked on (but the last-named at his men), until the drill ended a few
minutes afterwards, and the military sprinkling dried up directly, and