There were a few people walking up and down in the alley, making the most
of the moment of dry weather. They saluted one another like
acquaintances, and three clean-shaven, walnut-faced old peasants bowed in
response to March's stare, with a self-respectful civility. They were
yeomen of the region of Ansbach, where the country round about is dotted
with their cottages, and not held in vast homeless tracts by the nobles
as in North Germany.

The Bavarian who had imparted this fact to March at breakfast, not
without a certain tacit pride in it to the disadvantage of the Prussians,
was at the supper table, and was disposed to more talk, which he managed
in a stout, slow English of his own. He said he had never really spoken
English with an English-speaking person before, or at all since he
studied it in school at Munich.

"I should be afraid to put my school-boy German against your English,"
March said, and, when he had understood, the other laughed for pleasure,
and reported the compliment to his wife in their own parlance. "You
Germans certainly beat us in languages."

"Oh, well," he retaliated, "the Americans beat us in some other things,"
and Mrs. March felt that this was but just; she would have liked to
mention a few, but not ungraciously; she and the German lady kept smiling
across the table, and trying detached vocables of their respective
tongues upon each other.

The Bavarian said he lived in Munich still, but was in Ansbach on an
affair of business; he asked March if he were not going to see the
manoeuvres somewhere. Till now the manoeuvres had merely been the