"Auf wiedersehen, dear grandfather," and off trotted the little girl and into her godmother's house with a "Good-day, dear Tante Gretchen!"
Wilhelm was at home, and he carved Bettina a little doll, and she enjoyed herself very much indeed, hearing all about the soldiers and all that they were doing in Jena, but she was only nine years old and tired with her walk, and so, when long after supper her grandfather opened the door, she was fast asleep in her chair, her tired little feet dangling.
Frau Schmidt greeted him crossly.
"Don't excuse yourself, Hans," she said. "You forgot the child, I know it. Perhaps you have been home and had to come back for her? Nein? Well, what was it then that kept you? You know, Hans, how anxious her mother will be, with the child out in the night time."
The old man hung his head. Certainly he had forgotten the child. He was always forgetting everything and everybody, and some day, as the women of his family were always telling him, he was certain to have a good lesson, a lesson, perhaps, which might teach him to remember.
"You are right, Gretchen," he said, "but, you see, my dear woman, when an old soldier of Frederick the Great meets again the Prussians, there is much news to hear, isn't there?" And he looked with smiling blue eyes into Frau Schmidt's kind, plump countenance.
"Well, well," she said, her frown vanishing, "but come now, it's a dreadful night and you must have a glass of beer before you start out into the darkness. Willy, uncork the bottle there."
Then she went to Bettina.
"Wake up, Liebchen," and she gave her a tiny shake.
"Is it Frederick Barbarossa?" And Bettina came forth from dreamland.