The young cleric gazed at us inquiringly, as if he expected to hear us exclaim about the cruelty to animals, but catching his eye I smiled, and said something about "_ces bons chiens_," at which he seemed relieved, and nodded back grinning, but he did not remove the stogie from his mouth.
Priests in Flanders seemed to enjoy much liberty of action, and do things not possible elsewhere. For instance, at Blankenberghe, a fashionable watering place on the coast, I saw a prosperous, well-fed one (if I may so characterize him without meaning any offense) dining at the Great Gasthof on the digue, who after finishing his _filet aux champignons_, with a bottle of _Baune superior_, ordered his "_demi tasse_" with _fine champagne_, and an Havana cigar which cost him not less than three francs (sixty cents) which he smoked like a connoisseur while he listened to the fine military band playing in the Kiosk. And why not, if you please?
We remained for nearly twenty minutes beside this white wall at the roadside, the animated discussions of the farmers continuing, for the group was constantly augmented by fresh arrivals who meant to travel with us or back to the town from which we had come. It was here that we saw the first stork in Flanders, where indeed they are uncommon. This one had a nest in a large tree nearby. One of the boys shied a small stone at him as he flapped overhead, but, I think, without any idea of hitting him. The peasants assembled here eyed us narrowly. They probed me and my belongings with eyes of corkscrew penetration, but since this country of theirs was a show place to me, I argued that I had no right to object to their making in return a show of me. But such scrutiny is not comfortable, especially if one is seated in a narrow compartment, and the open-mouthed _vis à vis_ gazes at one with steely bluish green unwinking eyes--somewhat red rimmed. Especially if such scrutiny is accompanied by free comments upon one's person, delivered in a voice so pitched as to convey the information to all the other occupants, and mayhap the engine driver ahead.
The other train at length arrived, there was an interchange of occupants and then we proceeded amid heavy clouds of thick black smoke which, for a time, the wind blew with us. Across the tilled fields are narrow paths leading to dykes and roads. There are many green ditches filled with water and in them we could see rather heavy splashes from time to time. These we discovered were made by large green bull frogs--really monsters they were, too. Of course we were below the sea level here, but one cannot credit the old story about the boy who plugged the dyke with his thumb, thereby saving the whole country.