"I'm so sorry for people who are not going to Bayreuth, Adela!" exclaimed Polly, looking out of the compartment window, as the train steamed rapidly on from Nuremberg where they had passed several days of delight revelling in the old town.
Adela, with her mind more on those past delights, had less attention for thoughts of music, so she answered absently, "Yes. Oh, Polly, wasn't that Pentagonal Tower fine? What is it they call it in German?"
But Polly didn't hear, being absorbed in the Wagner festival of which her mind was full, so Jasper answered for her. "Alt-Nuenberg, you mean, the oldest building of all Nuremberg."
"Yes," said Adela, "well, I got two or three sketches of that tower."
"Did you?" cried Jasper, "now that's good."
"And I got that horrible old robber-knight,—what's his name?—sitting inside his cell, you know."
"Eppelein von Gallingen," supplied Jasper. "Well, he was a horrible-looking customer, and that's a fact."
"Oh, I liked him," said Adela, who rejoiced in ugly things if only picturesque, "and I got into one corner of the cell opposite him, so as to sketch it all as well as I could in such a dark place, and a lady came down the little stairs; you remember them."
"I rather think I do," said Jasper, grimly. "I was trying to get out of the way of a huge party of tourists, and I nearly broke my neck."
"Well, this lady came down the stairs. I could see her where I sat, but she couldn't see me, it was so dark in the cell; and she called to her husband—I guess he was her husband, because he looked so triste." Adela often fell into French, from being so long at the Paris school, and not from affectation in the least. "And she said, 'Come, Henry, let us see what is in there.' And she took one step in, and peered into that robber-knight's face; you know how he is sitting on a little stool, his black hair all round his face, staring at one."