e
major for the papers. There were crowds of people on the major's
steps, and Jan learned that all the peasants and loafers had been
called in to certify, so that nobody should avoid their military
service. Later we parted, taking two knapsacks. Dr. Boyle and Miss
Dickenson were very generous, giving us large supplies of chocolate,
Brand's essence, and corned beef for our travels, and we had two boxes
of "compressed luncheons," black horrible-looking gluey tabloids which
claim to be soup, fish, meat, vegetables and pudding in one swallow.

[Illustration: OUT-PATIENTS.]

[Illustration: SHOEING BULLOCKS.]

The Austrian prisoners bade us a sad farewell, but many friends
accompanied us to the station, and the rotund major and his rounder wife
did us the like honour. Our major was a queer mixture: he was jolly
because he was fat, and he was stern because he had a beaky nose, and in
any interview one had first to ascertain whether the stomach or the nose
held the upper hand, so to speak. With the wife one was always sure--she
had a snub nose. On this occasion the major furiously boxed the Austrian
prisoner coachman's ears, telling us that he was the best he had ever
had. The unfortunate driver was a picture of rueful pleasure. The two
plump dears stood waving four plump hands till we had rumbled round the
corner of the landscape.

In the train to Nish it was intensely hot. We had sixteen or seventeen
fellow-passengers in our third-class wooden-seated carriage--all the
firsts had been removed, because they could not be disinfected--and the
windows, with the exception of two, had been screwed tightly down. Every
time we stood up to look at the landscape somebody slipped into our
seat, and we were continually sitting down into unexpected laps.
Expostulations, apologies, and so on. Somebody had gnawed a piece from
one of the wheels, and we lurched through the scenery with a banging
metallic clangour which made conversation difficult, in spite of which
Jo astonished the natives by her colloquial and fluent Serbian. We had
an enormous director of a sanitary department and a plump wife,
evidently risen, but fat people rise in Serbia automatically like
balloons. We had three meagre old gentlemen, one unshaven for a week,
one whiskered since twenty years with Piccadilly weepers like a stage
butler; some ultra fashionable girls and men; and a dear old dumb woman
wearing three belts, who had been a former outpatient; and several
st