She sat down in a corner with an odd feeling of surprise at being included in the category Frauen, and giving a swift timid glance through her veil at the public confronting her was relieved to find it consisted only of a comfortable mother and her child.

I know not why the adjective comfortable should so invariably be descriptive of mothers in Germany.  In England and France though you may be a mother, you yet, I believe, may be so without being comfortable.  In Germany, somehow, you can’t.  Perhaps it is the climate; perhaps it is the food; perhaps it is simply want of soul, or that your soul does not burn with a fire sufficiently consuming.  Anyhow it is so.  This mother had all the good-nature that goes with amplitude.  Being engaged in feeding her child with belegte Broedchen—­that immensely satisfying form of sandwich—­she at once offered Priscilla one.

“No thank you,” said Priscilla, shrinking into her corner.

“Do take one, Fraeulein,” said the mother, persuasively.

“No thank you,” said Priscilla, shrinking.

“On a journey it passes the time.  Even if one is not hungry, thank God one can always eat.  Do take one.”

“No thank you,” said 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 Broedchen.  “You see he is clever, Fraeulein.  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 Fraeulein will take it off in a minute.  The Fraeulein 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 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.”