"Persons who are as intelligent as that should never be in
trains at night. Their brains cannot bear it. Would he not be happier
if he lay down and went to sleep?"
"Yes, yes; that is what I have been telling him ever since we left
Kunitz"--Priscilla shivered--"but he will not go. Dost thou hear what
the Fraeulein says, Hans-Joachim?"
"Why don't she take that black thing off?" whimpered the child.
But how could the poor Princess, however anxious to be kind, take off
her veil and show her well-known face to this probable inhabitant of
Kunitz?
"Do take it off, Fraeulein," begged the mother, seeing she made no
preparations to do so. "When he gets ideas into his head there is
never peace till he has what he wants. He does remind me so much of
his father."
"Did you ever," said Priscilla, temporizing, "try him with a
little--just a little slap? Only a little one," she added hastily, for
the mother looked at her oddly, "only as a sort of counter-irritant.
And it needn't be really hard, you know--"
"_Ach_, she's a witch--Mutti, she's a witch!" shrieked the child,
flinging his face, butter and all, at these portentous words, into his
mother's lap.
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