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She was enraged, but the recollection of the thick Dutchman in white trousers wide at the hips and narrow at the ankles, with his shoulder-straps and black bullet head, glaring at her in the light of the lamps, was so repulsively comical that she could not help a smiling grimace. Then she became anxious.
Trenching tools were unhafted and returned to their carriers, equipments were donned again, belts tightened, and shoulder-straps buttoned. Singly, in pairs, and in files we hurried back to the point of assembly, to find a very angry captain awaiting us. "I am very disappointed with to-night's work," he said.
His tall, commanding form thus set off contrasted strongly with the short figure of General Grant, clothed as he was in a soiled suit, without sword or other insignia of his position except a pair of dingy shoulder-straps.
It is strange how one can accustom himself to "pack." He may never use the tump-line, since it goes across the head, and will unseat his intellect if he does, but with shoulder-straps and a tump-line a man who thinks he is not strong will simply amaze himself inside of a week by what he can do. As for our little canoes, we could trot with them.
He thought Wes' kept him from the shoulder-straps, and he got him out of the way. Wasn't he always snooping 'round in the regiment trying to undermine your brother? Wasn't he always trying to be popular? Ah, I know the Spragues. But I'll give them a wrench that'll twist their damned pride out of them.
I want to look at that fellow." So saying, he quickly threw off his uniform coat with its gleaming shoulder-straps and collar device, stowed his forage-cap under the seat, and sat bareheaded and in his shirt-sleeves.
But give a girl shoulder-straps, and she finds the pressure over so small an area on the shoulders unbearable, and besides, the process of dressing becomes then a matter of almost as much complication as the harnessing of a horse, when some inexperienced person has done the unharnessing.
If we were special service men, we were told that there were no instructions for us, and that we had better turn up three or four times a day and look at the order-board. If we were correspondents, heads were shaken, and smooth-spoken people with stars and crowns on their shoulder-straps said they doubted very much whether Lord Roberts would grant any more passes.
"You see, dear, he's my Captain commands about a hundred sich as me, and wears a sword and shoulder-straps and other fine clothes, and orders me and the rest around, and has his own tent, all by himself, and his servant to cook for him, and we have to salute him, and do jest what he says, and not talk back at least, so he kin hear it, and jest lots o' things."
And on Thursday, at midnight a number of people entered Yanson's cell, and one man, with shoulder-straps, said: "Well, get ready. We must go." Yanson, moving slowly and drowsily as before, put on everything he had and tied his muddy-red muffler about his neck. The man with shoulder-straps, smoking a cigarette, said to some one while watching Yanson dress: "What a warm day this will be.
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