derneath. This
she served in thick china mugs with a clot of whipped cream swimming on
top. Julia would buy a box of the cheese crackers that Schulz kept in
stock specially for her, and give several to the sleek little black
bitch that stood pleading with her quaint turned-out fore-feet placed on
Julia's slippers. Schulz, beaming serenely behind a pyramid of "intense
carnation" bottles on his perfume counter, would chuckle at the antics
of his pet. "Ah, he is a wise little dog!" he would exclaim with naive
pride. "He knows who is friendly!" He always called the little dog "he,"
which amused us.

On Sunday afternoon the drugstore was closed from one to five, and
during those hours Schulz took his weekly walk, accompanied by the dog
which plodded desperately after him on her short legs. Sometimes we met
him swinging along the by-roads, flourishing a cudgel and humming to
himself. Whenever he saw a motor coming he halted, the little black
dachshund would look up at him, and he would stoop ponderously down,
pick her up and carry her in his arms until all danger was past.

As the time went on he and I used to talk a good deal about the war.
Minna, pale and weary, would stand behind her steaming urn, keeping the
shawl tight round her shoulders; Rhubarb and I would argue without heat
upon the latest news from the war zone. I had no zeal for converting the
old fellow from his views; I understood his sympathies and respected
them. Reports of atrocities troubled him as much as they did me; but the
spine of his contention was that the German army was unbeatable. He got
out his faded discharge ticket from the Wuertemberger Landsturm to show
the perfect system of the Imperial military organization. In his desk at
the back of the shop he kept a war map cut from a Sunday supplement and
over this we would argue, Schulz breathing hard and holding his beard
aside in one hand as he bent over the paper. When other customers came
in, he would put the map away with a twinkle, and the topic was dropped.
But often the glass top of the perfume counter was requisitioned as a
large-scale battleground, and the pink bottle of rose water set to
represent Von Hindenburg while the green phial of smelling salts was
Joffre or Brussilov. We fought out the battle of the Marne pretty
completely on the perfume counter. "_Warte doch_!" he would cry. "Just
wait! You will see! All the world is against her, but Germany will win!"

Poor Minna was always afraid