curious places?"'

Well, it _was_ a little like sleeping on a wood-pile during a
continuous earthquake. But that was nothing compared to the news
broken to us about eleven o'clock that our luggage would be examined
at the German frontier at five o'clock in the morning. That meant
being wakened at half past four. But it was quite unnecessary, for we
were not asleep.

It was cold and raining. I got up and dressed for the day. But my
companion put her seal-skin on over her dressing-gown, and perched her
hat on top of that hair of hers, and looked ready to cope with Diana
herself.

"They'll ruin my things if they unpack them," I said.

"You just keep still and let me manage things," she answered. So I
did. I made myself as small as possible and watched her. She selected
her victim and smiled on him most charmingly. He was tearing open the
trunk of a fat American got up in gray flannel and curl-papers. He
dropped her tray and hurried up to my companion.

"Have you anything to declare, madam?" he asked.

"Tell him absolutely nothing," she whispered to me. I obeyed, but he
never took his eyes from her. She was tugging at the strap of her
trunk in apparently wild eagerness to get it open. She frowned and
panted a little to show how hard it was, and he bounded forward to
help her. Then she smiled at him, and he blinked his eyes and tucked
the strap in and chalked her trunk, with a shrug. He hadn't opened it.
She kept her eye on him and pointed to my trunk, and he chalked that.
Then seven pieces of hand luggage, and he chalked them all. Then she
smiled on him again, and I thanked him, but he didn't seem to hear me,
and she nodded her thanks and pulled me down a long stone corridor to
the dining-room where we could get some coffee.

At the door I looked back. The customs officer was still looking after
my companion, but she never even saw it.

The dining-room was full of smoke, but the coffee and my first taste
of zwieback were delicious. Then we went out through a narrow doorway
to the train, where we were jostled by Frenchmen with their habitual
"_Pardon!_" (which partially reconciles you to being walked on), and
knocked into by monstrous Germans, who sent us spinning without so
much as a look of apology, and both of whom puffed their tobacco smoke
directly in our faces. It was still dark and the rain was whimpering
down on the car-roof, and, take it all in all, the situation was far
from pleasant, but we are hard to