“But it’s awfully important what you have to eat!” cried the Terror.
“I should jolly well think so!” cried Erebus.
The princess tried hard to get back to the moral sublimities of her exalted station; but the Twins would not have it. They kept her firmly to the broad human questions of German cookery and sweets. The princess, used to having information poured into her by many elderly but bespectacled gentlemen and ladies, was presently again enjoying her new part of dispenser of information. Her cheeks were faintly flushed; and her eyes were sparkling in an animated face.
In these interrogations and discussions the time had slipped away unheeded by the interested trio. The crimson baroness had awakened, missed her little charge, and waddled off into the house in search of her. A slow search of the house and gardens revealed the fact that she was not in them. As soon as this was clear the baroness fell into a panic and insisted that the whole household should sally forth in search of her.
The princess was earnestly engaged in an effort to make quite dear to the Twins the exact nature of one of the obscure kinds of German tartlet, a kind, indeed, only found in the principality of Cassel-Nassau, where the keen ears of the Terror caught the sound of a distant voice calling out.
He rose sharply to his feet and said: “Listen! There’s some one calling. I expect they’ve missed you and you’ll have to be getting back.”
The princess rose reluctantly. Then her face clouded; and she said in a tone of faint dismay: “Oh, dear! How annoyed the baroness will be!”
“You take a great deal too much notice of that baroness,” said Erebus.
“But I have to; she’s my—my gouvernante,” said the princess.
“I don’t see what good it is being a princess, if you do just what baronesses tell you all the time,” said Erebus coldly.