"Only for the silly reason that we're too young. And I shall be an officer in a month or two; but the Baroness is like Rosa in that, she can't understand when a fellow's grown up."
"It'll come all right when you've been in the army a year or two," I said consolingly.
"A year or two," he exclaimed in some dismay.
"Well, if she won't wait for you as long as that, she isn't worth bothering about, Hans."
But he wasn't in a mood for any philosophic consolation. "But she will; she's said so a hundred times. There's no doubt about her; but there's something else; somebody else, rather."
"And which are you? Number one or number two?"
"Oh, I don't mean with her; but old Gratz has some one else."
"And what's he got to do with it?"
"Johann! Seeing that he's her father, he's got everything to do with it, of course."
This was something like a jar in all truth. He was about the last soul in Berlin who ought to know that I had so far recovered my memory as to be able to handle the car. "Do you mean that this old lady is Baron von Gratzen's wife?"