I replied.
"What is ..." he began again, and stuck fast. "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" he ended rather feebly.
We conversed for some minutes. Then "You come from Nish?" he said.
"Yes," said I.
"You speak German very well for a Servian. I did not know that the ladies learned foreign languages."
"I am English."
"Dear God!" he cried, and came out into the corridor to have a better view of me. "You are English and you come from a town in the middle of Servia! Ach! how dangerous! Now I am a man. I am making a pleasure trip to Constantinople with my friends. We should never think of stopping in a country like this. We are travelling straight through from Vienna."
"I also am making a pleasure trip, but it is possible that the same things are not interesting to us. I am going to Pirot."
"My God, how English! Look you, Fräulein, your nation does things that are quite fearfully silly, and it succeeds because the things are so unexpected that no one is prepared for them. You are like your own army, some day you will walk into an ambush."
"But it always comes home when it has done all that it meant to do," I persisted; for I never allow the Empire to be scored off if I can help it.