"The park," said Dellwig superbly, with a wave of the hand.
Susie opened her eyes at the word park, and looked about. "It isn't a park," she said peevishly, "it's a forest—a horrid, gloomy, damp wilderness."
"Oh, it's lovely!" cried Letty, giving a jump of delight as she peered down the serried ranks of pine trees.
It was a thick wood of pines and beeches, railed off from the road on either side by wooden rails painted in black and white stripes. Uncle Joachim had been the loyalest of Prussians, and his loyalty overflowed even into his fences. Æsthetic instincts he had none, and if he had been brought to see it, would not have cared at all that the railings made the otherwise beautiful avenue look like the entrance to a restaurant or a railway station. The stripes, renewed every year, and of startling distinctness, were an outward and visible sign of his staunch devotion to the King of Prussia, the very lining of the carriage with its white and black squares was symbolic; and when they came to the gate within which the house itself stood, two Prussian eagles frowned down at them from the gate-posts.
CHAPTER VI
A low, white, two-storied house, separated from the forest only by a circular grass plot and a ditch with half-melted snow in it and muddy water, a house apparently quite by itself among the creaking pines, neither very old nor very new, with a great many windows, and a brown-tiled roof, was the home bestowed by Uncle Joachim on his dear and only niece Anna.
"So this is where I was to lead the better life?" she thought, as the carriage drew up at the door, and the moaning of the uneasy trees, and all the lonely sounds of a storm-beaten forest replaced the rattling of the wheels in her ears. "The better life, then, is a life of utter solitude, Uncle Joachim thought? I wish I knew—I wish I knew——" But what it was she wished she knew was hardly clear in her mind; and her thoughts were interrupted by a very untidy, surprised-looking maid-servant, capless, and in felt slippers, who had darted down the steps and was unfastening the leather apron and pulling out the rugs with hasty, agitated hands, and trying to pull Susie out as well.
The doorway was garlanded with evergreen wreaths, over which a green and white flag flapped; and curtseying and smiling beneath the wreaths stood Dellwig's wife, a short lady with smooth hair, weather-beaten face, and brown silk gloves, who would have been the stoutest person Anna had ever seen if she had not just come from the presence of the parson's wife.
"I never saw so many bows in my life," grumbled Susie, pushing the servant aside, and getting out cautiously, feeling very stiff and cold and miserable. "Letty, you are on my dress—oh, how d'you do—how d'you do," she murmured frostily, as the Frau Inspector seized her hand and began to talk German to her. "Anna, are you coming? This—er—person thinks I'm you, and is making me a speech."