'Why are you crying?'

'Why shouldn't I cry, when I have had my ears boxed?'

'Who boxed your ears?'

'Who? Why, Herr Boege!'

Herr Boege filled the post of schoolmaster at Pognębin.

'And has he a right to box your ears?'

'I suppose so, as he did it.'

Magda, who had been hoeing in the garden, came through the hedge, and, with the hoe in her hand, went up to the child.

'What are you saying?' she asked.

'What am I saying—? If that Boege didn't call me a Polish pig, and give me a box on the ears, and say that just as they have beaten the French now, so they will trample us underfoot, for they are the strongest. And I had done nothing to him, but he had asked me who is the greatest person in the world, and I had said it was the Holy Father, but he boxed my ears, and I began to cry, and he called me a Polish pig, and said that just as they have beaten the French....'