very evening from the housemaid that one of the children there has the
measles."

That quite settled it. Anna could not expose Karlchen to measles. Why
did he not stay, as he had written he would, at Stralsund? As he was
here, however, she could not let him fall a prey to measles, and she
asked the princess to order a room to be got ready.

It is a proof of her solemnity on that first evening with Karlchen that
when his mother, praising her beauty, mentioned her dimples as specially
bewitching, he should have said, surprised, "What dimples?"

It is a proof, too, of the duplicity of mothers, that the very next day
in church the princess, sitting opposite the innkeeper's rosy family,
and counting its members between the verses of the hymn, should have
found that not one was missing.

Karlchen left on Sunday evening after a not very successful visit. He
had been to church, believing that it was expected of him, and had found
to his disgust that Anna had gone for a walk. So there he sat, between
his mother and Princess Ludwig, and extracted what consolation he could
from a studied neglect of the outer forms of worship and an elaborate
slumber during the sermon.

The morning, then, was wasted. At luncheon Anna was unapproachable.
Karlchen was invited to sit next to his mother, and Anna was protected
by Letty on the one hand and Fraeulein Kuhraeuber on the other, and she
talked the whole time to Fraeulein Kuhraeuber.

"Who _is_ Fraeulein Kuhraeuber?" he inquired irritably of his mother, when
they found themselves alone together again in the afternoon.

"Well, you can see who she is, I should think," replied his mother
equally irritably. "She is just Fraeulein Kuhraeuber, and nothing more."

"Anna talks to her more than to anyone," he said; she was already "Anna"
to him, _tout court_.

"Yes. It is disgusting."

"It is very disgusting. It is not right that Treumanns should be forced
to associate on equal terms with such a person."

"It is scandalous. But you will change all that."

Karlchen twisted up the ends of his moustache and looked down his nose.
He often looked down his nose because of his eyelashes. He began to hum
a tune, and felt happy again. Axel Lohm was right when he doubted
whether there had ever been a permanently crushed Treumann.

"She has a strange assortment of _alte Schachteln_ here," he said, after
a pause during which his thoughts were rosy. "That Elmreich, now. What
relation does she say