The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight Read Online Free PDF

Priscilla.
    "Why does she wear that black thing over her face?" inquired the child. "Is she a witch?"
    "Silence, silence, little worthless one," cried the mother, delightedly stroking his face with half a
Brödchen
. "You see he is clever, Fräulein. He resembles his dear father as one egg does another."
    "Does he?" said Priscilla, immediately conceiving a prejudice against the father.
    "Why don't she take that black thing off?" said the child.
    "Hush, hush, small impudence. The Fräulein will take it off in a minute. The Fräulein has only just got in."
    "Mutti, is she a witch? Mutti, Mutti, is she a witch, Mutti?"
    The child, his eyes fixed anxiously on Priscilla's swathed head, began to whimper.
    "That child should be in bed," said Priscilla, with a severity born of her anxiety lest, to calm him, humanity should force her to put up her veil. "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 Fräulein 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, Fräulein," 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.
    "There, there, poor tiny one," soothed the mother, with an indignant side-glance at Priscilla. "Poor tiny man, no one shall slap thee. The Fräulein does not allude to thee, little son. The Fräulein is thinking of bad children such as the sons of Schultz and thy cousin Meyer. Fräulein, if you do not remove your veil I fear he will have convulsions."
    "Oh," said the unhappy Priscilla, getting as far into her corner as she could, "I'm so sorry--but I--but I really can't."
    "She's a witch, Mutti!" roared the child, "I tell it to thee again--therefore is she so black, and must not show her face!"
    "Hush, hush, shut thy little eyes," soothed the mother, putting her hand over them. To Priscilla she said, with an obvious dawning of distrust, "But Fräulein, what reason can you have for hiding yourself?"
    "Hiding myself?" echoed Priscilla, now very unhappy indeed, "I'm not hiding myself. I've got--I've got--I'm afraid I've got a--an affection of the skin. That's why I wear a veil."
    "
Ach
, poor Fräulein," said the mother, brightening at once into lively interest. "Hans-Joachim, sleep," she added sharply to her son, who tried to raise his head to interrupt with fresh doubts a conversation grown thrilling. "That is indeed a misfortune. It is a rash?"
    "Oh, it's dreadful," said Priscilla, faintly.
    "
Ach
, poor Fräulein. When one is married, rashes no longer matter. One's husband has to love one in spite of rashes. But for a Fräulein every spot is of importance. There is a young lady of my acquaintance whose life-happiness was shipwrecked only by spots. She came out in them at the wrong moment."
    "Did she?" murmured Priscilla.
    "You are going to a doctor?"
    "Yes--that is, no--I've been."
    "Ah, you have been to Kunitz to Dr. Kraus?"
    "Y--es. I've been there."
    "What does he say?"
    "That I must always wear a veil."
    "Because it looks so bad?"
    "I suppose so."
    There was a silence. Priscilla lay back in her corner exhausted, and shut her eyes. The mother