"They reminded me rather of carrots that had just been pulled out of the ground," Harry mutters.
"How the old times rise up before me!" Lato muses, letting his glance wander anew over the garden, where there is buzzing of innumerable bees; over the clumsy façade of the mansion; over the little eminence where still stand the quarters of Tuschalek and the Pole; then up to the old ruined castle, which stands out against the dark-blue August skies an almost formless shape, brown and grim, with its old scars from fire, and hung about with wreaths of wild climbing vines.
"'Tis odd,--something has seemed to me lacking about the dear old nest," Lato begins again, after a pause. "Now I know what it is."
"Well?"
"The little figure of your cousin Zdena. I am always looking for her to come skipping from among the flowers like a wayward little fairy."
Harry frowns, plucks a buttercup growing in the grass, and is mute.
Without heeding his friend's mood, Treurenberg goes on: "As a child, she was most charming and unusually intelligent and gifted. Has the promise of her childhood not been fulfilled?"
Harry pulls another buttercup out of the grass, and carefully deposits it beside the first.
"That is a matter of opinion," he remarks, carelessly, without looking at his friend.
"'Tis strange! Many a girl's beauty vanishes suddenly at about fourteen without leaving a trace; but I would have wagered my head that your cousin would have been beautiful," remarks Lato.