When the pig found that it could not throw its rider, it essayed another means to be rid of him. It lay down in the gutter and rolled over in the mud. When Harry arose, he looked like the bad boys in "Slovenly Peter" after they had been dipped in the inkstand.
"I told you how it would be," the fat young man observed, phlegmatically, and went on drinking beer. As I afterwards learned, he was Harry's tutor, Herr Pontius.
"What does it matter?" said Harry, composedly, looking down at the mud dripping from him, as if such a bath were an event of every-day occurrence; "I did what I chose to do."
"And now I shall do what I choose to do. You will go to your room and translate fifty lines of Horace."
Harry shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. I now think that he was posing a little for our sakes, for we had just driven up to the castle, but then his composure made a great impression upon me. After he had bowed respectfully to Uncle Paul from where he stood, he vanished behind a side-door of the castle, at the chief entrance of which we had drawn up. A dignified footman received us in the hall, and a crowd of little black dachshunds, with yellow feet and eyebrows, barked a loud welcome.
We were conducted into a large room on the ground-floor,--apparently reception-room, dining-room, and living-room all in one,--whence a low flight of wooden steps led out into the garden. A very sallow but otherwise quite pretty Frenchwoman, who reminded me--I cannot tell why--of the black dachshunds, and who proved to be my little cousin's governess, received us here and did the honours for us.
My cousin Heda, a yellow-haired little girl with portentously good manners, relieved me of my parasol, and asked me if I had not found the drive very warm. Whilst I made some monosyllabic and confused reply, I was wondering whether her brother would get through his punishment and make his appearance again before we left. When my uncle withdrew on the pretext of looking after some agricultural matter, Heda asked me if I would not play graces with her. She called it jeu de gráce, and, in fact, spoke French whenever it was possible.
I agreed, she brought the graces, and we went out into the garden.
Oh, that Komaritz garden! How clumsy and ugly, and yet what a dear, old-fashioned garden it was! Lying at the foot of the hill crowned by the ancient ruin and the small frame house built for the tutors,--who were changed about every two months,--it was divided into huge rectangular flower-beds, bordered with sage, lavender, or box, from which mighty old apricot-trees looked down upon a luxuriant wilderness of lilies, roses, blue monk's-hood, scarlet verbenas, and whatever else was in season. Back of this waste of flowers there were all sorts of shrubs,--hawthorns, laburnums, jessamines, with here and there an ancient hundred-leaved rose-bush, whose heavy blossoms, borne down by their own weight, drooped and lay upon the mossy paths that intersected this thicket. Then came a green lawn, where was a swing hung between two old chestnuts, and near by stood a queer old summerhouse, circular, with a lofty tiled roof, upon the peak of which gleamed a battered brass crescent. Everywhere in the shade were fastened in the ground comfortable garden-seats, smelling deliciously of moss and mouldering wood, and where you least expected it the ground sloped to a little bubbling spring, its banks clothed with velvet verdure and gay with marsh daisies and spiderwort, sprung from seed which the wind had wafted hither. I cannot begin to tell of the kitchen-garden and orchard; I should never be done.
And just as I have here described it as it was fourteen years ago the dear old garden stands to-day, with the exception of some trifling changes; but--they are talking of improvements--poor garden! What memories are evoked when I think of it!