United States or India ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Good-bye," he said, and by the droop of his eyelids I judged he too was a little under the influence of that brain-twisting cordial. He recollected something else with a start, felt in his breast-pocket, and produced another packet, this time a cylinder the size and shape of a shaving-stick. "Here," said he. "I'd almost forgotten. Don't open this until I come to-morrow but take it now."
The stick had been worn down, leaving room for the compass at the bottom of the box. The soldier who searched us did not notice the compass, and handed the shaving-stick back to me, and I breathed easier. But the gendarme had probably done more searching than the soldier, and asked me for it.
That day we shaved, but, there being no stream near, we had to empty the rain-drops off the leaves into the top of the box which held Ted's shaving-stick. It took time, of course, but what was time to us? We had more time than anything else.
The Sergeant Major poured out a volume of questions in German, to which we replied, "Nix forstand." Then the gendarme thought something was being overlooked, and he suggested that we be searched. I was afraid of that, and had taken the precaution of hiding the compass as well as I could, by putting it in the bottom of the pasteboard box that held our shaving-stick.
There was a comradeship, a youthfulness, carelessness, about it all that gripped Peter. He let himself go, and when he did so he was a good companion. One little incident in the Grand Magasin completed his abandonment to the day and the hour. They were ostensibly buying a shaving-stick, but at the moment were cheerily wandering through the department devoted to lingerie.
He pictured himself crossing the drug-store floor, entering the telephone-booth, putting five cents in the slot. He stared at the red-and-green globes in the druggist's window; inspected a display of soaps, and recollected the fact that for a week now he had failed to take home any shaving-soap and had had to use ordinary hand-soap. "Golly! I must go in and get a shaving-stick. No, darn it!
Word Of The Day