Nothing further is said about this matter for the moment. The children return from Box Hill, and are rigged out for church. Two young people, friends of ours, and recently married, having no domestic circle of their own, and having promised to spend the whole Christmas Day with us, arrived. Then we set out, trying as much as possible to think that Christmas Day is different from any other day, and pleased to observe that the younger folk, at least, cherish the delusion.
But just before reaching the church I say to the small lady who got the letter in the morning, and whom we generally call Tita:
“When do you expect to see Charlie?”
“I don’t know,” she answers. “After this cruel affair he won’t like to go about much.”
“You remember that he promised to go with us to the Black Forest?”
“Yes; and I am sure it will be a pleasant trip for him.”
“Shall we go to Huferschingen?”
“I suppose so.”
“Franziska is a pretty girl.”
Now you would not think that any great mischief could be done by the mere remark that Franziska was a pretty girl. Anybody who had seen Franziska Fahler, niece of the proprietor of the “Goldenen Bock” in Huferschingen, would admit that in a moment. But this is nevertheless true, that our important but diminutive Queen Tita was very thoughtful during the rest of our walk to this little church; and in church, too, she was thinking so deeply that she almost forgot to look at the effect of the decorations she had nailed up the day before. Yet nothing could have offended in the bare observation that Franziska was a pretty girl.