But by the face of Little-Boy, who now reached the glass up to the window again, one could see that he had only been doing something which seemed to him quite a matter of course.
“Do you like the bouquet?” asked the old colonel.
“Yes, thanks, very well,” said the boy, who snatched at his cap politely, and went on his way with his brother.
The colonel looked after them until they had turned a corner of the street and disappeared from his sight.
“With boys like that”—then said the colonel, returning to his soliloquizing—“it is often an odd thing about boys like that.”
“That they should fight so in the public streets!” said the fat waiter with disapproval, still standing at his post. “One wonders how the teacher can allow it; and they seem to belong to good family, too.”
“It isn’t that that does the harm,” grunted the old colonel. “Young people must have their liberty, teachers can’t always be keeping an eye on them. Boys all fight—must fight.”
He rose heavily from his place so that the chair creaked beneath him, scraped the cigar butt out of its holder into the ash-tray, and walked stiffly over to the wall where his hat hung on a nail. At the same time he continued his reverie.
“In young blood like that nature will show itself—everything, just as it really is—afterward, when older, things look all much alike—then one is able to study more carefully—young blood like that.”
The waiter had put his hat into his hand; the colonel took up his tumbler again, in which there were still a few drops of the red wine.