“I think,” said Madame Rosenberg, bustling past them, “I think that as the evening air is cool, we had better take possession of the little room at the end of the garden; there is a window in it which looks out on the road, and we can see everybody who goes by. Do you remember, Franz, we supped there with my father on pork-chops and sauer-kraut the evening before we were married?”
Mr. Rosenberg’s previous conversation seemed to have made him somewhat oblivious—he confessed having forgotten the pork-chops, but said that he had probably thought more of her than of them, at such a time.
“I don’t know that,” said his wife, “for you scarcely spoke a word, and eat enormously. Now that I think of it, I dare say that was the reason you looked so miserably ill the next day.”
“I dare say it was,” replied Mr. Rosenberg, rubbing his forehead hastily, and then turning to little Peppy, who was dragging from his pocket the toys given him by Hamilton.
“Ah, those are childish things,” cried Gustavus, pushing him aside, and leaning against his father’s arm, while he endeavoured, with more haste than dexterity, to open a little wooden box. “Those are childish things, but here are swans and fish made to follow a magnet, and they swim about in the water as if they were alive. Crescenz says I may swim them in her basin to-morrow.”
“Papa, look at my drum,” cried Peppy, in his turn endeavouring to push aside his brother, “look at the nice large drum which Hamilton has given me.”
“Say Monsieur de Hamilton, or Herr von Hamilton,” said Madame Rosenberg; “you and Gustle take great liberties.”
“We have no von in England,” said Hamilton, slightly colouring, “and if the children may not call me Hamilton, I must teach them my Christian name.”
“What is your Christian name?” asked Gustle.
“Alfred. I hope you like it?”