"News," said that cavalier, as he assisted his friend Karl to clasp on his cuirass; "by my soul 'tis enough to make one's hair stand on end, and to frighten a troop-horse!"
"Quite a prodigy, is it Fritz?" asked Karl.
"Gentlemen," continued the major with all seriousness, "the wife of Colonel Dübbelsteirn has just been delivered of a fine little boy—"
"Bah—and what is there in that?" asked M'Alpine, and several of our officers.
"What is there in it?" retorted the Danish major, indignantly; "there is something very remarkable, when we consider the way it came into the world!"
"Has it a tail?" asked Kildon.
"Or horns?" added Culcraigie.
"It is quite unlike any of you," retorted Fritz; "'tis a plump little boy, as fat as Bacchus, or the colonel himself (and we all know that he fully realizes the old Friesland proverb, Grette arsen behove wyde brœken.) The baby has been born in buff-coat and jack-boots, like a little trooper, and the whole city is ringing with the tidings of so marvellous a birth."
"Buff-coat and jacks—by Heaven, he is laughing at us!" said our Celts, twisting their mustaches.
"I assure you, gentlemen, that it is quite as the major says," said Karl; "but he has omitted to add that this miraculous bantling has the buttons of the Sleswig musketeers on its doublet——"