“I put my money on a bob-tailed nag!...
Doo-dah ... Doo-dah!
I put my money on a bob-tailed nag;
... Doo-dah! ... Doo-dah!! ... DEY!!!”
MARTHA OF DRANVOORDE
Martha Beduys, in Belgium, was considered pretty, even handsome. Of that sturdy Flemish build so characteristic of Belgian women, in whom the soil seems to induce embonpoint, she was plump to stoutness. She was no mere girl; twenty-seven years had passed over her head when the war broke out, and she saw for the first time English soldiers in the little village that had always been her home. There was a great deal of excitement. As the oldest of seven sisters, Martha was the least excited, but the most calculating.
The little baker’s shop behind the dull old church had always been a source of income, but never a means to the attainment of wealth. Martha had the soul of a shop-keeper, a thing which, in her father’s eyes, made her the pride of his household.
Old Hans Beduys was a man of some strength of mind. His features were sharp and keen, his small, blue eyes had a glitter in them which seemed to accentuate their closeness to each other, and his hands—lean, knotted, claw-like—betokened his chief desire in life. Born of a German mother and a Belgian father, he had no particular love for the English.
When the first British Tommy entered his shop and asked for bread, old Beduys looked him over as a butcher eyes a lamb led to the slaughter. He was calculating the weight in sous and francs.
That night Beduys laid down the law to his family.