I laughed. "I'm not exactly a kid now, Hans, at any rate."
"Rather not; and what she'll think when she sees you I don't know."
This let in a glimmer of the truth and I made a shot. "You mean she doesn't much fancy the family arrangement?" His face told me it was a bull's-eye, but he hesitated to own it. "When a man's in my state it's only decent for his real friends to tell him the hang of things, Hans," I said as a little touch of the spur.
"I daresay it's a lot of lies now that I've seen you."
I tumbled to that, of course. "You mean that your sister has heard things which have set her against me?"
He nodded. "That you have only pretended to be out of the country all the time and then had to run away—oh, I don't know exactly what it was, but it was enough for Rosa. She always takes a different view of everything from the rest of us."
Rather good hearing. It seemed to offer a way of breaking off the engagement. "She wants to end things between us, you mean?"
"I don't know for certain, but I know what I think. She wouldn't come to the station to-night for one thing, and then, well, if I was engaged to a girl I wouldn't have her so thick with a fellow as she is with Oscar Feldmann. He's always here. But don't you breathe a word that I've told you about this."
"Not I, my dear fellow; I'm only too grateful to you. Is he in the army then?"
"Not he, but he ought to be;" and as this turned him on to the army again, I listened for a minute or two and yawned, and he took the hint and went away, promising to see me the first thing in the morning.