Yes, always Fritz. The father looked them through, lingering over each one with the same longing, hungry look with which we would fain call to life the images of our dead. There was Fritz with his first gun, Fritz in his school-uniform, and, at last, Fritz as a young diplomat, photographed in Paris, with a mountain view in the background.
This picture trembled in the old hands. How he had admired it! how proud he had been of his handsome son! and then----
There was a knock at the door. Buried in the past, he had not heard the bustle of preparation in the next room, and now he thrust away the pictures to take his seat at his well-furnished table, where Lotta was waiting to serve him.
"Sit down, sit down," the Baron said, with unwonted geniality, "and tell me of what is going on here."
Lotta seated herself bolt upright at a respectful distance from her master.
"Well?" began the Baron, pouring out the coffee for himself.
"I wrote all the news to the Herr Baron; nothing else has happened, except that the English sow which the Herr Baron bought at the fair littered last night,--twelve as nice fat little pigs as ever were seen."
"Indeed! very interesting. But what was in the letter? Since I never received it, it must be lying at Franzburg."
"Oh, all sorts of things,--about the short-horn calves, and the weight of the hay, and Baron Harry's betrothal; but of course the Herr Baron knew of that."
The Baron set down his cup so hastily that it came near being broken. "Not a word!" he exclaimed, doing his best to conceal the delight which would mirror itself in his face. Harry betrothed? To whom but to the golden-haired enchantress he had met in the forest, Fritz's daughter Zdena? To be sure, he had threatened to disinherit the boy if he married her, but the fellow had been quite right to set the threat at naught. The old man chuckled at the fright he would give them, and then---- Meanwhile, he tried to look indifferent.