"This is my cousin, Bawne Saxham, Count von Herrnung."
"Why did you leave me?" von Herrnung grumbled as Bawne stiffly saluted, and she told him:
"Because I saw you occupied in conversation with your German friends."
"Women are incomprehensible creatures! ... How do you know that they were German? At any rate, whether they were or not, they have gone away now! You find me annoyed. It is because they are—what shall I call it?—perhaps a little exigent. Now I will have a smoke. I suppose you do not mind?"
He had not freed his hand from the brown leather satchel to remove his hat when he had mopped his perspiring forehead, with a big cambric handkerchief scented with the très persistent perfume that always clung about his clothes. Nor did he relinquish it to help himself to a cigar, but opened the gold case containing the weeds with the hand that drew it from his pocket, extracted a cigar with his teeth, and returned the case to his pocket; then produced a matchbox, opened it in the same way, picked out a match, shut the box, and struck the match upon it, saying to Bawne, as he blew out the first mouthful of smoke: "What do you think of that, my fine fellow? Should I not make a famous one-handed man?" But Bawne's suffrages remained unwon, although the dexterity of the thing had secretly pleased him. He remained doggedly silent, scowling with his reddish-fair brows, thrusting out his chin.
"Should I not? Tell me!" von Herrnung persisted. "Or is it that British boys are cowards and afraid to answer when they are spoken to?"
"I am not afraid—of anything or anybody!"
Bawne reddened and looked the taunting big man between the eyes, squarely. The look added—And least of all of anybody like you! He went on:
"But I think it takes more than—that kind of being clever—to make a famous man."
"Nicht so schlimm!" Von Herrnung nodded. "But all the same these little tricks are worth knowing. You might be bound with ropes to a post, or tree, or waggon by the enemy, and if he happened to have left your matches on you—and you could get one hand free—there is no knot man could tie that I could not wriggle myself out of!—you might burn the rope and get away! I did that once when I was a gunner-boy of seventeen in South Africa——"