Then came the matter of Jo’s tooth.  This abscess had been nagging all the time, it had vigorously tried to get between Jo and the scenery.  We had sought dentists in Salonika, rejecting one because his hall was too dirty, a second because she (yes, a she) was practising on her father’s certificates, the third, a little Spaniard, had red-hot pokered the gums thereof and only annoyed it.  But we had heard there was a Russian dentist in Nish, a very good one.  The Russian dentist turned out to be a girl, and tiny—­she spoke no Serb, but Jo managed, by means of the second cousinship of the language, to make out what she said in Russian.

[Illustration:  Peasant women in Gala costume—­Nish.]

“The tooth must come out,” squeaked the small dentist.

“Can’t you save it?” prayed Jo; “it’s the best one I’ve got, and the one to which I send all the Serbian meat.”

“It must come out,” squeaked the Russ.

“Can’t you save it?” prayed Jo.

“It must come out,” reiterated the Russ.

“You’re very small,” said Jo, doubtfully.

This annoyed the dentist.  She pushed unwilling Jo into a chair, produced a pair of pincers, and, oh, woe! she wrenched to the north, she wrenched to the south, she wrenched to the east, and there was the tooth, nearly as big as the dentist herself.

“I never can eat Serbian meat again,” murmured Jo as she mopped her mouth.

After tea we returned to the S.D.W.O., and by means of our letter and our Englishness we got in front of all the unfortunate people who had been waiting for hours, and received our passes, etc., immediately.

Sir Ralph Paget’s storekeeper wouldn’t work on Sunday, so we had also to rest, and we celebrated by staying in bed late and going for a walk in the afternoon with an Englishman who was en route for Sofia.  We came to a little village where every house was surrounded by high walls made of wattle.  The women soon crowded round, imagining Mr. B——­ a doctor.  Jo pretended to translate, and gave advice for a girl with consumption, and an old woman whose hand was stiff from typhus, and we had to give the money for the latter’s unguent.  For the consumptive she said, “Open the windows, rest, and don’t spit”; but that isn’t a peasant’s idea of doctoring:  they want medicine or magic, one or the other, which doesn’t matter.

The train started “after eight” on Monday evening.  The English boys at the Rest house were very good to us, adding to our small stock of necessities a “Tommy’s treasure,” two mackintosh capes, and some oxo cubes.  One youth said, “You won’t want to travel a second time on a Serbian luggage train”; then ruefully, “I’ve done it!  The shunting, phew!”

A Serbian railway station is a public meeting-place; along the platform, but railed off from the train, is a restaurant which is one of the favourite cafes of the town.  It is such fun to the still childish Serbian mind to sit sipping beer or wine and watch the trains run about, and hear the whistles.  We had our supper amongst the gay crowd, and then pushed out into the darkened goods station to find our travelling bedroom, for we were to sleep in the waggons—­beds and mattresses having been provided—­and we had borrowed blankets from the Rest house.