ngers within that made it most desirable for them to get away from
Baker's and into their own little home without a moment's unnecessary
delay. He could not always be watching his tongue, and he found for
instance that it positively refused to call the Princess Ethel. It had
an almost equal objection to addressing her as niece; and it had a
most fatal habit of slipping out Grand Ducal Highnesses. True, at
first they mostly talked German together, but the tendency to talk
English grew more marked every day; it was in the air they breathed,
and they both could talk it so fatally well. Up at the cottages among
the workmen, or when they were joined by Mr. Dawson, grown zealous to
help, or by either of the young men Robin and Tussie, who seemed
constantly to be passing, the danger too was great. Fritzing was so
conscious of it that he used to break out into perspirations whenever
Priscilla was with him in public, and his very perspirations were
conspicuous. The strain made his manner oddly nervous when speaking to
or of his niece, and he became the subject of much conjecture to the
observant Robin. Robin thought that in spite of her caressing ways
with her uncle the girl must be privately a dreadful tyrant. It seemed
difficult to believe, but Robin prided himself on being ready to
believe anything at a moment's notice, especially if it was the worst,
and he called it having an open mind. The girl was obviously the most
spoilt of girls. No one could help seeing that. Her least wish seemed
to be for the uncle a command that was not even to be talked about.
Yet the uncle was never openly affectionate to her. It almost seemed
as though she must have some secret hold over him, be in possession,
perhaps, of some fact connected with a guilty past. But then this girl
and guilty pasts! Why, from the look in her eyes she could never even
have heard of such things. Robin thought himself fairly experienced
in knowledge of human nature, but he had to admit that he had never
yet met so incomprehensible a pair. He wanted to talk to Tussie
Shuttleworth about them, but Tussie would not talk. To Tussie it
seemed impossible to talk about Priscilla because she was sacred to
him, and she was sacred to him because he adored her so. He adored her
to an extent that amazes me to think of, worshipping her beauty with
all the headlong self-abasement of a very young man who is also a
poet. His soul was as wax within him, softest wax punched all over
wit