For some months we had been diligently studying German, for Miss Marryat thought it wise that we should know a language fairly well before we visited the country of which it was the native tongue.  We had been trained also to talk French daily during dinner, so we were not quite “helpless foreigners” when we steamed away from St. Catherine’s Docks, and found ourselves on the following day in Antwerp, amid what seemed to us a very Babel of conflicting tongues.  Alas for our carefully spoken French, articulated laboriously!  We were lost in that swirl of disputing luggage-porters, and could not understand a word!  But Miss Marryat was quite equal to the occasion, being by no means new to travelling, and her French stood the test triumphantly, and steered us safely to a hotel.  On the morrow we started again through Aix-la-Chapelle to Bonn, the town which lies on the borders of the exquisite scenery of which the Siebengebirge and Rolandseck serve as the magic portal.  Our experiences in Bonn were not wholly satisfactory.  Dear Auntie was a maiden lady, looking on all young men as wolves to be kept far from her growing lambs.  Bonn was a university town, and there was a mania just then prevailing there for all things English.  Emma was a plump, rosy, fair-haired typical English maiden, full of frolic and harmless fun; I a very slight, pale, black-haired girl, alternating between wild fun and extreme pensiveness.  In the boarding-house to which we went at first—­the “Chateau du Rhin,” a beautiful place overhanging the broad, blue Rhine—­there chanced to be staying the two sons of the late Duke of Hamilton, the Marquis of Douglas and Lord Charles, with their tutor.  They had the whole drawing-room floor:  we a sitting-room on the ground floor and bedrooms above.  The lads discovered that Miss Marryat did not like her “children” to be on speaking terms with any of the “male sect.”

Here was a fine source of amusement.  They would make their horses caracole on the gravel in front of our window; they would be just starting for their ride as we went for walk or drive, and would salute us with doffed hat and low bow; they would waylay us on our way downstairs with demure “Good morning”; they would go to church and post themselves so that they could survey our pew, and Lord Charles—­who possessed the power of moving at will the whole skin of the scalp—­would wriggle his hair up and down till we were choking with laughter, to our own imminent risk.  After a month of this Auntie was literally driven out of the pretty chateau, and took refuge in a girls’ school, much to our disgust; but still she was not allowed to be at rest.  Mischievous students would pursue us wherever we went; sentimental Germans, with gashed cheeks, would whisper complimentary phrases as we passed; mere boyish nonsense of most harmless kind, but the rather stern English lady thought it “not proper,” and after three months of Bonn we were sent home for the holidays, somewhat in disgrace.  But we had some lovely excursions during those months; such clambering up mountains, such rows on the swift-flowing Rhine, such wanderings in exquisite valleys.  I have a long picture-gallery to retire into when I want to think of something fair, in recalling the moon as it silvered the Rhine at the foot of Drachenfels, or the soft, mist-veiled island where dwelt the lady who is consecrated for ever by Roland’s love.