MY EDUCATION.
Now follow a couple of very colourless years. There was nothing more to anticipate from the summers. For, although Heda regularly appeared at Komaritz as soon as the city was too hot or too deserted, she did not add much to my enjoyment. Komaritz itself seemed changed when Harry was no longer there to turn everything upside-down with his good-humoured, madcap ways.
And there was a change for the worse in our circumstances; affairs at Zirkow were not so prosperous as they had been.
To vary the monotony of his country life, my uncle had built a brewery, from which he promised himself a large increase of income. It was to be a model brewery, but after it was built the startling discovery was made that there was not water enough to work it. For a while, water was brought from the river in wagons drawn by four horses, but, when this was found to be too expensive, the brewery was left to itself.
For years now it has remained thus passive, digesting in triumphant repose the sums of money which it swallowed up. The monster!
Whenever there is any little dispute between my uncle and my aunt, she is certain to throw his brew-house in his face. But, instead of being crushed by the mischief he has wrought, he declares, "The project was admirable: my idea was a brilliant one if it had only succeeded!"
But it did not succeed.
The consequence was--retrenchment and economy. My aunt dismissed two servants, my uncle kept only a pair of driving horses, and my new gowns were made out of my aunt Thérèse's old ones.
The entire winter we spent at Zirkow, and my only congenial friend was my old English governess, the Miss O'Donnel already mentioned, who came shortly before Harry's entrance into the army, not so much to teach me English as to learn German herself.
Born in Ireland, and a Catholic, she had always had excellent situations in the most aristocratic English families. This had given her, besides her other acquirements, a great familiarity with the curious peculiarities of the British peerage, and with social distinctions of rank in England, as to which she enlightened me, along with much other valuable information.