Again I am six years old and playing with Heda,--I intent and awkward, Heda elegantly indifferent. If one of her hoops soars away over my head, or falls among the flowers in one of the beds, she shrugs her shoulders with an affected smile, and exclaims, "Monstre!" At first I offer to creep in among the flowers after the lost hoop, but she rejects my offer with a superior "Quelle idée!" and assures me that it is the gardener's business.
Consequently, we soon come to the end of our supply of hoops, and are obliged to have recourse to some other mode of amusing ourselves.
"I am quite out of breath," says Heda, fanning herself with her pocket-handkerchief. "'Tis a stupid don't you think so?"
"But if I only could do it!" I sigh.
"It is quite out of fashion; nothing is played now but croquet," she informs me. "Do you like to play croquet?"
"I do not know what croquet is," I confess, much mortified.
"Ha, ha!" she laughs. "Mademoiselle," turning to the governess, who is now seated on the garden-steps, "only think, ma petite cousine does not know what croquet is!--delicious! Excuse me," taking my hand, "it is very ill bred to laugh, mais c'est plus fort que moi. It is a delightful game, that is played with balls and iron hoops. Sometimes you strike your foot, and that hurts; but more often you only pretend that it does, and then the gentlemen all come round you an pity you: it is too delightful. But sit down," pointing with self-satisfied condescension to the steps. We both sit down, and she goes on: "Where did you pass the winter?"
"At Zirkow."
"Oh, in the country! I pity you."
Heda--I mention this in a parenthesis--was at this time scarcely ten years old. "No winter in the country for me," this pleasure-loving young person continues. "Oh, what a delightful winter I had! I was at twelve balls. It is charming if you have partners enough--oh, when three gentlemen beg for a waltz! But society in Prague is nothing to that of Vienna--I always say there is only one Vienna. Were you ever in Vienna?"