Carlo smiled.
"Here I am saying the very character of thing I asked you not to speak of, Bianca! By the way, do you suppose we know any people here? Let us look around and see."
CHAPTER XIV
Major James Hersey
ARRANGEMENTS had been made in Coblenz for the quartering of the officers of the American Army of Occupation in certain German homes, payment being made in an ordinary business fashion.
On arriving in Coblenz, after his illness in Luxemburg, Major Jimmie Hersey discovered that especially comfortable accommodations had been prepared for him. Also he was to have as his companion, a personal friend, Sergeant Donald Hackett an exception being made to the sergeant's living in the same house with his commanding officer.
The household in which the two young Americans were located was one of the many households at this time in Germany whose state of mind it would have been difficult for any outsider to have understood or explained.
The head of the family, Colonel Otto Liedermann, was an old man, now past seventy, who had once been a member of the Kaiser's own guard. His son, Captain Ludwig Liedermann had been seriously wounded six months before the close of the war, and, although at present in his own home, was still said to be too ill to leave his apartment. There was one grown daughter, Hedwig, who must have been a little over twenty years of age. The second wife, Frau Liedermann, was much younger than her husband, and her children were two charming little girls, Freia and Gretchen, who were but six and eight years old.