Discussion resulted as usual in a compromise, and Hans carried me off to the bathroom. There was nothing the matter that soap and water and a clothes-brush couldn't put right. I was very dirty; had a bruise or two, a couple of scratches on my face, and a cut on my hand where one of the men had jabbed at it to make me release my hold of the stick.
The last looked the worst, because of the drop or two of blood smeared about; but it didn't amount to anything, and I was really lucky to have got off so lightly.
While I was removing the traces of the scrap, Hans told me a good deal more about Nita and the position of affairs in the von Gratzen household, together with his impressions of Nita's father.
"I think he's a regular bear, you know. He is to me; but then he doesn't like me any more than I do him, worse luck," he said dolefully.
"Do you think the best way to get any one to like you is to begin by disliking him?"
"I didn't begin it; but he always scowls when he finds me here, talks to me as if I was a kid of ten, and calls me 'Hansikin.' It makes me regularly sick, I can tell you. Of course he's awfully decent to his wife and Nita, and they both worship him; and so does he them. But he's always trying to make fun of me; and he's such an artful old beggar that I never get a chance of scoring off him. I believe he's as big a humbug as any in Berlin. And I'm not the only one who thinks so, too."
"What you've done to-day ought to change his opinion, Hans."
"That's just my rotten luck. I came up too late to do anything, and even the little I did do, the Baroness couldn't see."
"But Nita saw it."
"And a lot he'll care for what she says. He'll just grin and say I was a good boy, or some such rot as that, and forget it."