usly.

"What is it, then? I have noticed a something strange about you ever
since we landed at Dover. Tell me, Rudolph!"

Thus adjured, he cast a troubled glance in her direction. He saw a face
whose mild blue eyes and undetermined mouth he still swore by as the
standard by which to try all her inferior sisters, and a figure whose
growing embonpoint yearly approached the outline of his ideal hausfrau.
But it was either St. Anthony or one of his fellow-martyrs who observed
that an occasional holiday from the ideal is the condiment in the
sauce of sanctity; and some such reflection perturbed the Baron at this
moment.

"It is nozing moch," he answered.

"Oh, I know what it is. You have grown so accustomed to seeing the same
people, year after year--the Von Greifners, and Rosenbaums, and all
those. You miss them, don't you? Personally, I think it a very good
thing that you should go abroad and be a diplomatist, and not stay in
Fogelschloss so much; and you'll soon make loads of friends here. Mother
comes to us next week, you know."

"Your mozzer is a nice old lady," said the Baron slowly. "I respect her,
Alicia; bot it vas not mozzers zat I missed just now."

"What was it?"

"Life!" roared the Baron, with a sudden outburst of thundering
enthusiasm that startled the Baroness completely out of her composure.
"I did have fun for my money vunce in London. Himmel, it is too hot to
eat great dinners and to vear clothes like a monkey-jack."

"Like a what?" gasped the Baroness.

To hear the Baron von Blitzenberg decry the paraphernalia and splendors
of his official liveries was even more astonishing than his remarkable
denunciation of the pleasures of the table, since to dress as well
as play the part of hereditary grandee had been till this minute his
constant and enthusiastic ambition.

"A meat-jack, I mean--or a--I know not vat you call it. Ach, I vant a
leetle fun, Alicia."

"A little fun," repeated the Baroness in a breathless voice. "What kind
of fun?"

"I know not," said he, turning once more to stare out of the window.

To this dignified representative of a particularly dignified State
even the trees of Belgrave Square seemed at that moment a trifle too
conventionally perpendicular. If they would but dance and wave their
boughs he would have greeted their greenness more gladly. A good-looking
nursemaid wheeled a perambulator beneath their shade, and though she
never looked his way, he took a wicked pleasure