held the upper hand, so to speak. With the wife one was always sure--she
had a snub nose. On this occasion the major furiously boxed the Austrian
prisoner coachman's ears, telling us that he was the best he had ever
had. The unfortunate driver was a picture of rueful pleasure. The two
plump dears stood waving four plump hands till we had rumbled round the
corner of the landscape.

In the train to Nish it was intensely hot. We had sixteen or seventeen
fellow-passengers in our third-class wooden-seated carriage--all the
firsts had been removed, because they could not be disinfected--and the
windows, with the exception of two, had been screwed tightly down. Every
time we stood up to look at the landscape somebody slipped into our
seat, and we were continually sitting down into unexpected laps.
Expostulations, apologies, and so on. Somebody had gnawed a piece from
one of the wheels, and we lurched through the scenery with a banging
metallic clangour which made conversation difficult, in spite of which
Jo astonished the natives by her colloquial and fluent Serbian. We had
an enormous director of a sanitary department and a plump wife,
evidently risen, but fat people rise in Serbia automatically like
balloons. We had three meagre old gentlemen, one unshaven for a week,
one whiskered since twenty years with Piccadilly weepers like a stage
butler; some ultra fashionable girls and men; and a dear old dumb woman
wearing three belts, who had been a former outpatient; and several
sticky families of children.

The old gentlemen took a huge interest in Jo. They drew her out in
Serbian, and at every sentence turned each to the other and elevated
their hands, ejaculating "kako!" (how!) in varying terms of admiration
and flattery.