The very smell of the cooking came back to him--the daily _Sauerkraut_,
the watery chocolate on Sundays, the flavour of the stringy meat served
twice a week at _Mittagessen_; and he smiled to think again of the
half-rations that was the punishment for speaking English. The very
odour of the milk-bowls,--the hot sweet aroma that rose from the soaking
peasant-bread at the six-o'clock breakfast,--came back to him pungently,
and he saw the huge _Speisesaal_ with the hundred boys in their school
uniform, all eating sleepily in silence, gulping down the coarse bread
and scalding milk in terror of the bell that would presently cut them
short--and, at the far end where the masters sat, he saw the narrow slit
windows with the vistas of enticing field and forest beyond.
And this, in turn, made him think of the great barnlike room on the top
floor where all slept together in wooden cots, and he heard in memory
the clamour of the cruel bell that woke them on winter mornings at five
o'clock and summoned them to the stone-flagged _Waschkammer_, where boys
and masters alike, after scanty and icy washing, dressed in complete
silence.
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