There came a roar of laughter from the soldiers.
“Cap and coat too?”
“Yes; and it was he himself who said, ‘You had better take the cap as well.’ And I had not thought of the cap. Never once should I have dreamed of it. But he himself thrust it on me, ‘Take the cap as well, O take the cap as well.’ ‘I beseech you,’ he said to me, ‘take the cap as well.’ ”
“It is a French cap, Martin,” one of the soldiers said. “The Little Twig-Legs remarked of it, that it is a French cap. Thus we have the Paris fashions at Tlotoatin.”
“Mind” (another said) “that the French cap do not bring within itself the French crown.”
“This Englishman is more innocent than Joseph.”
“Wait, Martin,” one of the men said; “did not this Englishman offer you money?”
“Money? Why, he has no money. I, who watched his face, know well that he has no money.”
“No money and no coat and no cap.”
“Stay yet,” one objected. “He handed you paper, as I myself observed. Was not that money?”