“If papa has come home from his bureau,” said Crescenz, preparing to leave the room, “I’ll go this moment and tell him.”
“Stay,” cried Hildegarde, hastily; “he says he did not do it on purpose; and after all, I am not much hurt. You must not tell papa or mamma either.”
“Well, you certainly are the best fellow in the world, Hildegarde,” cried Fritz. “I declare I would rather be cuffed by you than kissed by Crescenz.”
“And cuffed you would have been, had you been near enough,” said Hildegarde, laughing, while she poured some water into a basin.
“Mamma will be sure to see the cut, and ask how it happened,” said Crescenz.
“I can easily hide it under my hair when it has stopped bleeding.”
“Now just for that, Hildegarde,” cried Fritz, “I promise to learn as many lessons as you please for the next fortnight.”
Madame Rosenberg’s step and the jingling of her keys alarmed them all. Hamilton turned to meet her in the passage, saying, “Can I speak to you for five minutes?”
“To be sure you can, and longer, if you like,” she replied, hooking her keys into the string of her apron. “Just let me look how things are going on in the kitchen, and I am at your service as long as you please. Put a cover on that pot, Walburg, and tell Miss Crescenz not to forget the powdered sugar for the tart, and the apples for the boys’ luncheon. And now,” she said, turning to Hamilton, and leading the way to her room, “what have you got to say? You look so serious that I suspect you are going to tell me that you dislike your rooms, as they look into a back street, and are near a coppersmith’s. Captain Black left me for that reason, although I told him he could look out of the drawing-room windows as much as he pleased, and receive all his visitors there. I could not make the coppersmith leave his shop, you know; though this much I must say, that in winter the nuisance is less felt than in summer, when the workmen, during the fine weather, hammer away all day in the lane, but in winter they work in the house, and shut the doors, so that they are scarcely heard at all.”
“I have slept too soundly to hear the coppersmiths,” said Hamilton, smiling; “and during the day I have been too seldom in my room to be disturbed by them. In fact, I find so much to amuse—I mean to say, so much to interest me as a foreigner in your house, that I do not think half a dozen smiths could induce me to leave you at present.”