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They are well spoken, and very hospitable. They feed well, eating much meat, which-owing to the rainy climate and the ranker character of the grass is not so firm and succulent as the meat of France and the Netherlands. The people are not so laborious as the French and Hollanders, preferring to lead an indolent life, like the Spaniards.
The dark walls of the hedge-rows had turned into blooming screens; the sodden verdure of lawn and meadow was streaked with a ranker freshness. We went forth without loss of time for a long walk on the hills. Reaching their summits, you find half England unrolled at your feet. A dozen broad counties, within the vast range of your vision, commingle their green exhalations.
Even where a minute before it had covered the level flats in a promise of maturity, rising up in ranker growth beneath the thorny trees and cactus, its place was now swept bare and all the earth trampled into narrow, hard-tamped trail.
Peter felt that the head under the helmet was shaven; that here was a man conscious of moving through the days of his life's stateliest fulfillment. Boylan was nearest; a little back from the rest Poltneck stood smiling, singing as he had never sung for the Little Father. It is a fact that the old ranker waited for the end of the stanza. "Who are you?"
Being an American, it was very hard, at first, to understand the class distinctions of British army life. And having understood them, it was more difficult yet to endure them. I learned that a ranker, or private soldier, is a socially inferior being from the officer's point of view.
And small wonder it was that out of that fruitful soil which had grown the Cid and the warriors of the heroic age, who should be rightly classed as prechivalric, there sprung up that ranker produce, the knights-errant. Of these, the seekers after adventure, the bohemians of the knightly order, Spain, as her native historians boast, was the teeming mother.
The early vegetables came up in well-defined green rows, the weeds appearing with them, too few and scattered to cause anxiety. Now all was changed. Weeds seemed created by magic in a night. The garden was becoming evenly green throughout; and the vegetables, in some cases, could scarcely be distinguished from the ranker growth of crowding, unknown plants among and around them.
'I told you how it would be! said the harsh voice of Ranker, with his spluttering laugh, 'and now you are my servant! 'Yes, for I have lost my Theeda! answered Oscar, with a heavy sigh. But even as he spoke, he chanced to turn his eyes towards the sea. Beyond the moon he saw a pure white cloud drifting down the sky.
He was afraid of Peter's answers, but that fear was passing now. In fact, Peter had answered surprisingly well, and his companion was breathing easily, as a man should in a state of mental health. It was not until this moment the German officer examining his passports, the ranker studying the insignia upon his sleeve that Peter met the disaster of the future.
He laughed where he could; he joked if a joke was possible; he was true to his friends, and never lost his temper or became ill-natured. Like all New Yorkers he was decidedly not a Bostonian; but he was what one might call a transplanted New Englander, like General Sherman; a variety, grown in ranker soil.
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