“I believe he not only forgot the hour, but where he was, and everything else,” said Kate.
“And poor Frank! who should have been in bed some hours ago,” sighed Nelly.
“Gone at last, girls!” exclaimed Frank, as he entered, laughing. “If it hadn't been a gust of wind that caught him at the door, and carried him clean away, our leave-taking might have lasted till morning. Poor fellow! he had so many cautions to give me, such mountains of good counsel; and see, here is a holy medal he made me accept. He told me the 'Swedes' would never harm me so long as I wore it; he still fancies that we are in the Thirty Years' War.”
In a hearty laugh over Hans Roeckle's political knowledge, they wished each other an affectionate good-night, and separated. Frank was to have his breakfast by daybreak, and each sister affected to leave the care of that meal to the other, secretly resolving to be up and stirring first.
Save old Andy, there was not one disposed to sleep that night. All were too full of their own cares. Even Dalton himself, blunted as were his feelings by a long life of suffering, his mind was tortured by anxieties; and one sad question arose again and again before him, without an answer ever occurring: “What is to become of the girls when I am gone? Without a home, they will soon be without a protector!” The bright fancies, the hopeful visions in which the evening had been passed, made the revulsion to these gloomy thoughts the darker. He lay with his hands pressed upon his face, while the hot tears gushed from eyes that never before knew weeping.
At moments he half resolved not to let Frank depart, but an instant's thought showed him how futile would be the change. It would be but leaving him to share the poverty, to depend upon the scanty pittance already too little for themselves. “Would Count Stephen befriend the poor girls?” he asked himself over and over; and in his difficulty he turned to the strange epistle in which the old general announced Frank's appointment as a cadet.
The paper, the square folding, the straight, stiff letters, well suited a style which plainly proclaimed how many years his English had lain at rest. The note ran thus:
GRABEN-WIEN, Octobre 9, 18—
WORTHY SIR AND NEPHEW, Your kindly greeting, but long-time
on-the-road-coming letter is in my hands. It is to me
pleasure that I announce the appointment of your son as a
Cadet in the seventh battalion of the Carl-Franz Infanterie.
So with, let him in all speed of time report himself here at
Wien, before the War's Minister, bringing his Tauf schein
Baptism's sign as proof of Individualism.
I am yours, well to command, and much-loving kinsman,
GRAF DALTON VON AUERSBERG, Lieut.-General and
Feldzeugmeister, K.K.A.
To the high and well-born, the Freiherr v. Dalton, in Baden Baden.