d.

'Is he speaking to me, dear?' asked Mrs. Harvey-Browne, looking up at
her son.

'I think he is, mother,' said Ambrose. 'I don't think you may lean on
that wolf.'

'Wolf?' said his mother in surprise, standing upright and examining the
animal through her eyeglasses with interest. 'So it is. I thought they
were Prussian eagles.'

'Anyhow you mustn't touch it, mother,' said Ambrose, a slight impatience
in his voice. 'He says the public are not to touch things.'

'Does he really call me the public? Do you think he is a rude person,
dear?'

'Does the lady intend to see the Schloss or not?' interrupted the
custodian. 'I have another party inside waiting.'

'Come on, mother--you want to, don't you?'

'Yes--but not if he's a rude man, dear,' said Mrs. Harvey-Browne, slowly
ascending the steps. 'Perhaps you had better tell him who father is.'

'I don't think it would impress him much,' said Brosy, smiling. 'Parsons
come here too often for that.'

'Parsons! Yes; but not bishops,' said his mother, coming into the
echoing hall, through whose emptiness her last words rang like a
trumpet.

'He wouldn't know what a bishop is. They don't have them.'

'No bishops?' exclaimed his mother, stopping short and staring at her
son with a face of concern.

'_Bitte um die Eintrittskarten_,' interrupted the custodian, slamming
the door; and he pulled the tickets out of Brosy's hand.

'No bishops?' continued Mrs. Harvey-Browne, 'and no Early Fathers, as
that smashed-looking person, that cousin of Frau Nieberlein's, told us
last night? My dear Brosy, what a very strange state of things.'

'I don't think she quite said that, did she? They have Early Fathers
right enough. She didn't understand what you meant.'

'Stick and umbrella, please,' interrupted the custodian, snatching them
out of their passive hands. 'Take the number, please. Now this way,
please.'

He hurried, or tried to hurry, them under the tower, but the bishop's
wife had not hurried for years, and would not have dreamed of doing so;
and when he had got them under it he asked if they wished to make the
ascent. They looked up, shuddered, and declined.

'Then we will at once join the other party,' said the custodian,
bustling on.

'The other party?' exclaimed Mrs. Harvey-Browne in German. 'Oh, I hope
no objectionable tourists? I quite thought coming so early we would
avoid them.'

'Only two,' said the custodian: 'a respectable gentleman and his wife.'

The