Marianne might be useless, but Bettina thought her almost as pretty as the Queen, in her short-waisted dress, her puffed sleeves, her long mitts and her lovely curling hair tied in place with a snood of blue ribbon.
When they all came to the sitting-room in the evening Bettina would arrange her stool quite near the "gracious Fräulein Mariechen," and, while she knitted away, she used to gaze up shyly at her pretty neighbour and make up stories about the Prince who would one day come and marry her.
"Pauline's worth ten of her," Otto was always saying. He was nearly sixteen and was always wanting someone to do things for him, and, "Marianne," he said, "is so stupid. Pauline can mend a fellow's things in a minute."
But Elsa and Ilse, the twins, who were so alike only their mother seemed always to know which was which, and Carl preferred Marianne.
"She can tell you stories," they told Bettina.
As for Marianne herself, sometimes she was quite unhappy. She wanted to be useful, but she did so love to read, and then she forgot. And house work and cooking were not amusing.
Madame von Stork had little good for idleness.
"It is German," she always said, "to work. Even our good Queen is never idle. I have seen a handkerchief she herself embroidered, Marianne, with beautiful flower designs and a crown in gold placed in one corner."
Settling herself with a huge bundle of mending, she with her keen eyes would inspect the family group each evening.
"Come, now, Marianne, no reading," she would say. "You do not know what to do? Nonsense. There is your tent stitch. Pauline? Yes, yes, you of course are busy. Ilse, Elsa? Bettina? Knitting, that's good. Carl? You are a boy? What foolishness. Get your pencils and drawing book. You don't like that? Very well then. Let Otto bring you the silhouettes that Mademoiselle von Appen began in Berlin, and you can cut others. But, Otto, first fix the lamp. There, where the light can fall on your father's book. There, that is good."