Page - 113 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

ribbons are mostly red and wave in the breeze——when their wearers bluster as they should——like flags. The rose or bud-shaped favours are generally cut out of coloured linen or paper and have the advantage of always keeping bright and fresh and not drooping, as real flowers do;—for a drooping air won’t do for recruits. Only, there is just one green sprig of rosemary with it, forming the heart of the favour; and in this green spray the beloved talks to her lover, saying I know not what sweet and good things! So long as the beloved has to do with rosemary, it is the May-time of love. Now where was I to get my favour from? A sweetheart! I knew of one, but I had none: I had never reflected how indispensable the sweetheart is to the recruit. Must I, while all the others marched away with fluttering top-knots, trot favourless behind? And what was the good of marching and what the good of going for a soldier, if I left no sobbing girl behind me? The day arrived. My mother made as if she were calm, at times even cheerful, but she had always red eyes. Once she went to my master and wept and was surprised that he did not cry too. But he only laughed and said that he did not see what there was to grieve about: Peter need not be afraid of soldiering; he would have a good time; he had learnt tailoring; he might even become a cutter in the army tailors’ department; and then he could laugh at all of them. But my dear mother wouldn’t hear about laughing, for the time being; she remained disconsolate: under the circumstances she felt better so. She got ready for me the finest linen she could lay hold of and marked each garment with a little cross; but nothing further was said about the recruiting, until the last moment, when I was starting and mother wished to go with me as far as Krieglach. “For God’s sake, don’t!” I cried; for how would it have gone off if I had marched with mother by my side and the lads in front of us with their wild songs and chaff! Pretty badly: such young devils are lads that there are times when the gentlest mother’s son of them all blushes for his parents. “Nay, nay, mother,” said father to her, “you can’t go; you’re no good at that; and they would only poke fun at the boy.” My mother did not say another word. She did not even come as far as the front door with me, for fear of getting me laughed at by the passers-by. Inside, in the parlour, she dipped her finger in the holy-water stoup and made a cross with it over my face and then hurried into the next room, to let her tears flow freely. I felt just a queer sort of choking at the throat, but did not let it master me. And I won’t warrant that, when, in the dark passage, I made a quick movement over my eyes, I did not at the same time wipe off the wet mark of