"Likely enough," Kitty replied. "But papa would remember what blood runs in this daughter's veins,"—and there was a wayward gleam in her brown eyes. "'To wander when and where it would, ever beseemed the miller's blood,' Frau President."
The councillor cleared his throat and carefully smoothed his silky moustache, while the Frau President looked as dismayed as if an icy blast had suddenly affronted her delicate face, and Flora burst into a laugh. "O child of mortality, you are delightfully naïve!" she cried, clapping her hands "Yes, yes,—'To wander is the miller's joy,'" she quoted. "Only let our youngest make her début with such words on her lips at Moritz's next grand soirée, grandmamma, and see how every one will stare!" She looked at the old lady with merry malice, but Frau von Urach had entirely regained her self-possession.
"I trust to your sister's inborn tact, my child," she said, as she extended her hand in welcome to the doctor, smiling as she did so a smile that just showed the tips of her teeth through her drawn lips and left one in doubt whether it were sweet or sour.
"Tact, tact,—of much use that will be," Flora repeated, shaking her head mockingly. "Her miller tendencies are just as much inborn. The worthy Lukas has failed to inoculate her with a trifle of worldly wisdom,—there's the rub. Indeed, I am really glad you are alone, Kitty; I am sure we shall like you far better than if you were pinned to the apron of your prosaic old governess."
Kitty had taken off her cap; the warm, odorous air had flushed her cheeks. Thus, her head crowned with thick golden-brown braids, she looked still taller.
"Prosaic? My Frau Doctor?" she cried, gaily. "No more poetical woman lives."
"Indeed? Raves about the moon, I suppose, copies sentimental verses, etc., or even composes them herself,—eh?"
The young girl's bright eyes were riveted for a moment upon the face of the mocking speaker. "No, she does not copy verses, but quantities of her husband's manuscript, because the printers of the medical periodicals declare that they cannot possibly decipher his hieroglyphics," she said, after a short pause. "She writes neither verses nor romances: she has not the time; and yet she is full of poetry. Ah, you smile just as you used to do, Flora, with those deep lines at the corners of your mouth; but I no longer want to run away from the sneer. There is a combative vein in me, and I maintain that there is real poetry in the way in which my dear Lukas always knows how to grasp the truest and best side of life, in her knowledge of how to make home lovely and attractive, with beauty of various kinds peeping out from every corner, and in the talent she shows for making her husband, myself, and her chosen circle of friends content and happy."
As she finished, a shower of fresh violets came raining against her breast, whence they fell to the floor.
"Brava, Kitty!" cried Henriette. She was standing in the conservatory, close to the grating, her pale hands pressed to her panting bosom. "I should like to have my arms about your neck this minute, but—just look at me—would it not be ridiculous? You so thoroughly healthy, body and mind, and I——" Her voice failed her.