FOOTNOTES:
[1] Italian: Bread.
[2] German: Bread.
[3] Italian: Good comrade.
CHAPTER V
My First Hardship
There were two girls on the place, Miga, the farmer’s daughter, and Erna, the milkmaid. The latter, a big, muscular, typically German peasant girl, took it upon herself to be my special guardian and tutor in the art of agriculture, and came to play no less a part in my life than that of my Woman of Destiny and Chief Tormentor.
Of course, I had told the Unteroffizier[4] that I could farm—for farming was certainly better than mining or munitions making—but, as a matter of fact, beyond the items that horses ate hay and cows gave milk, and a general hazy idea that there was a lot of digging attached to it, I knew nothing about it.
So my tutor had plenty to do—and she did it quite thoroughly. Aside from her formidable physique, she had a tone of command which could but strike awe in a new and unsophisticated Gefangener.
My greenness she found most uproariously funny, and she gave me every opportunity to exhibit it. I was put on all of those delightful tasks which are especially reserved for green-horns, such as chasing the pigs, leading the cows to the village bull, putting the halter on an uncatchable colt in the pasture, or lifting a board which was nailed down.
But I made display of enough of my ignorance without these special inducements. One day I think I made a blunder of quite everything which was given me to do. Besides such minor offences as putting the wrong harness on the horse and tying the cows in the wrong stalls, I spilled a sack of oats, broke a window-pane in the barn and buried a young turkey beneath a fork-full of manure—all in one day! At first Erna scolded sharply, but finding me quite hopeless, she seemed finally to give me up and simply trust to luck that I would leave the house standing and some of the stock alive at the end of this “perfect day.” She did, however, regard me with such a horribly disgusted look that, had I not been so “fed up” and disgusted myself, I would have had grave misgivings for my future.