"Wait a bit!" said Ottensen, "I'll ride a little way with you." He asked Senior-lieutenant Frommelt politely for permission, and sent his men back in charge of a sergeant. Then he joined the battery, chattering away gaily in his droll, staccato fashion, and making his horse leap the ditch from time to time. He sat his magnificent steed splendidly, and with his slender, neatly-made figure, looked the perfect model of a cavalry officer.
Reimers looked at him with honest admiration and pleasure.
"Your hussars are smart fellows!" he said.
Ottensen smiled, well pleased, and said: "Well, perhaps so!"
"They climb the trees well," continued the artilleryman.
"I should think so!" said Ottensen. "Trees, corn-stacks, church-towers, roofs of houses, telegraph-posts, and devil knows what besides--mountain-tops too, only there aren't any hereabouts."
"Perhaps there will be during the manœuvres."
The hussar let his single eye-glass fall, and showed an astonished face.
"Manœuvres, my dear fellow? Why, all's plain sailing in them!"
"How do you mean? Plain sailing?"