He bowed and retired into the tent, and in a few minutes his carriage was on its way back to the city.
Ilse hastened to her husband, who had been requested by the Chamberlain to act for the Prince. It was immediately determined to break up the party: the children were put into the carriages, and the rest returned to the city in earnest conversation.
Meanwhile Laura feigned illness, and sat in her little sitting-room rummaging about among the old ballads. After the meeting in the village garden she had discovered with dismay that, in her anxiety about the Doctor, she had much diminished her treasure: full a dozen of the best were gone, and thus the tie by which she held the collector's heart fast threatened to come to an end. She had, therefore, not sent anything since the drinking-song. But to-day, when the Doctor had experienced treatment that gave her more concern than it did him, she sought for something to console him.
A heavy step on the staircase disturbed her in the work of selection. She had hardly time to throw her treasures into the secret drawer before Mr. Hummel was at the door. It was a rare visit, and Laura received him with the foreboding that his coming portended serious results. Mr. Hummel approached his daughter and looked at her closely, as if she had been a new Paris invention.
"So you have a headache, and could not accept the invitation? I am not accustomed to that in my daughter. I cannot prevent your mother from allowing her feelings to affect her brains, at times; but I have a right to demand that your head should, under all circumstances, remain sound. Why did you not accept the invitation to the picnic?"
"It would have been an intolerable constraint upon me," said Laura.
"I understand," replied Mr. Hummel. "I am not much in favor of princes, but not much against them either. I cannot discover that they have greater heads than other people. I am therefore obliged to consider them simply as ordinary customers who are not always number one, neither do they always wear number one goods. Nevertheless, when a prince invites you, with other distinguished persons, to a respectable summer entertainment, and you refuse to go, I, as your father, ask you for the reason; and, between you and me, it shall now be no question of headache."
Laura perceived, from the expression of her father's countenance, that he had some other idea in his head.
"If you wish to know the truth, I will make no secret of it. I am not invited on my own account; for what do these people care about me? It is only as the appendage of our lodgers."
"You knew that when the invitation came, and yet you jumped for joy."