"Shut your great mouths for five minutes, chaps."

"Get on with it, petit."

"There isn't a great lot of it," said Eudore.

"Well, then, you were saying you had got a hump with your old
people?"

"Ah, yes. They had tried their best to make up for Mariette--with
lovely rashers of our own ham, and plum brandy, and patching up my
linen, and all sorts of little spoiled-kid tricks--and I noticed
they were still slanging each other in the old familiar way! But you
talk about a difference! I always had my eye on the door to see if
some time or other it wouldn't get a move on and turn into a woman.
So I went and saw the mayor, and set off, yesterday, towards two in
the afternoon--towards fourteen o'clock I might well say, seeing
that I had been counting the hours since the day before! I had just
one day of my leave left then.

"As we drew near in the dusk, through the carriage window of the
little railway that still keeps going down there on some fag-ends of
line, I recognized half the country, and the other half I didn't.
Here and there I got the sense of it, all at once, and it came back
all fresh to me, and melted away again, just as if it was talking to
me. Then it shut up. In the end we got out, and I found--the limit,
that was--that we had to pad the hoof to the last station.

"Never, old man, have I been in such weather. It had rained for six