So the evening was spent in harmony; a harmony clouded at intervals, it is true, first by Priscilla’s disappointment about the cottage, then by a certain restiveness she showed before the more blatant inefficiencies of the Baker housekeeping, then by a marked and ever recurring incapacity to adapt herself to her new environment, and lastly and very heavily when Fritzing in the course of conversation let drop the fact that he had said she was Maria-Theresa.  This was a very black cloud and hung about for a long while; but it too passed away ultimately in a compromise reached after much discussion that Ethel should be prefixed to Maria-Theresa; and before Priscilla went to bed it had been arranged that Fritzing should go next morning directly after a very early breakfast to Lady Shuttleworth and not leave that lady’s side and house till he had secured the cottage, and the Princess for her part faithfully promised to remain within the Baker boundaries during his absence.

VIII

Lady Shuttleworth then, busiest and most unsuspecting of women, was whisking through her breakfast and her correspondence next morning with her customary celerity and method, when a servant appeared and offered her one of those leaves from Fritzing’s note-book which we know did duty as his cards.

Tussie was sitting at the other end of the table very limp and sad after a night of tiresome tossing that was neither wholly sleep nor wholly wakefulness, and sheltered by various dishes with spirit-lamps burning beneath them worked gloomily at a sonnet inspired by the girl he had met the day before while his mother thought he was eating his patent food.  The girl, it seemed, could not inspire much, for beyond the fourth line his muse refused to go; and he was beginning to be unable to stop himself from an angry railing at the restrictions the sonnet form forces upon poets who love to be vague, which would immediately have concentrated his mother’s attention on himself and resulted in his having to read her what he had written—­for she sturdily kept up the fiction of a lively interest in his poetic tricklings—­when the servant came in with Fritzing’s leaf.

“A gentleman wishes to see you on business, my lady,” said the servant.

“Mr. Neumann-Schultz?” read out Lady Shuttleworth in an inquiring voice.  “Never heard of him.  Where’s he from?”

“Baker’s Farm, my lady.”

At that magic name Tussie’s head went up with a jerk.

“Tell him to go to Mr. Dawson,” said Lady Shuttleworth.

The servant disappeared.

“Why do you send him away, mother?” asked Tussie.

“Why, you know things must go through Dawson,” said Lady Shuttleworth pouncing on her letters again.  “I’d be plagued to death if they didn’t.”

“But apparently this is the stranger within our gates.  Isn’t he German?”

“His name is.  Dawson will be quite kind to him.”