stration: PEASANT WOMEN IN GALA COSTUME--NISH.]

"The tooth must come out," squeaked the small dentist.

"Can't you save it?" prayed Jo; "it's the best one I've got, and the one
to which I send all the Serbian meat."

"It must come out," squeaked the Russ.

"Can't you save it?" prayed Jo.

"It must come out," reiterated the Russ.

"You're very small," said Jo, doubtfully.

This annoyed the dentist. She pushed unwilling Jo into a chair, produced
a pair of pincers, and, oh, woe! she wrenched to the north, she wrenched
to the south, she wrenched to the east, and there was the tooth, nearly
as big as the dentist herself.

"I never can eat Serbian meat again," murmured Jo as she mopped her
mouth.

After tea we returned to the S.D.W.O., and by means of our letter and
our Englishness we got in front of all the unfortunate people who had
been waiting for hours, and received our passes, etc., immediately.

Sir Ralph Paget's storekeeper wouldn't work on Sunday, so we had also
to rest, and we celebrated by staying in bed late and going for a walk
in the afternoon with an Englishman who was _en route_ for Sofia. We
came to a little village where every house was surrounded by high walls
made of wattle. The women soon crowded round, imagining Mr. B---- a
doctor. Jo pretended to translate, and gave advice for a girl with
consumption, and an old woman whose hand was stiff from typhus, and we
had to give the money for the latter's unguent. For the consumptive she
said, "Open the windows, rest, and don't spit"; but that isn't a
peasant's idea of doctoring: they want medicine or magic, one or the
other, which doesn't matter.

The train started "after eight" on Monday evening. The English boys at
the Rest house were very good to us, adding to our small stock of
necessities a "Tommy's treasure," two mackintosh capes, and some oxo
cubes. One youth said, "You won't want to travel a second time on a
Serbian luggage train"; then ruefully, "I've done it! The shunting,
phew!"

A Serbian railway station is a public meeting-place; along the platform,
but railed off from the train, is a restaurant which is one of the
favourite cafes of the town. It is such fun to the still childish
Serbian mind to sit sipping beer or wine and watch the trains run about,
and hear the whistles. We had our supper amongst the gay crowd, and
then pushed out into the darkened goods station to find our travelling
bedroom, for we were to sleep in the waggons-