Then the files of soldier slaves passed on, and March crossed the bridge
spanning the gardens in what had been the city moat, and found his way to
the market-place, under the walls of the old Gothic church of St.
Gumpertus. The market, which spread pretty well over the square, seemed
to be also a fair, with peasants' clothes and local pottery for sale, as
well as fruits and vegetables, and large baskets of flowers, with old
women squatting before them. It was all as picturesque as the markets
used to be in Montreal and Quebec, and in a cloudy memory of his wedding
journey long before, he bought so lavishly of the flowers to carry back
to his wife that a little girl, who saw his arm-load from her window as
he returned, laughed at him, and then drew shyly back. Her laugh reminded
him how many happy children he had seen in Germany, and how freely they
seemed to play everywhere, with no one to make them afraid. When they
grow up the women laugh as little as the men, whose rude toil the
soldiering leaves them to.
He got home with his flowers, and his wife took them absently, and made
him join her in watching the sight which had fascinated her in the street
under their windows. A slender girl, with a waist as slim as a corseted
officer's, from time to time came out of the house across the way to the
firewood which had been thrown from a wagon upon the sidewalk there.
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