he was only hurled violently against the side of a man in a
black coat and straw hat who looked like an elderly confidential clerk,
so respectable and complete with his short grey beard and spectacles,
who was evidently the father, for he instantly on his own account
smacked the boy on his other ear, and sweeping off his hat entreated
the Herr Leutnant to forgive the boy on account of his extreme youth.

The cousin, whom by now I didn't like, was beginning very severely to
advise the parent jolly well to see to it, or German words to that
effect, that his idiotic boy didn't repeat such insolences, or by hell,
etc., etc., when there was such a blast of extra noise and hurrahing
that the rest of his remarks were knocked out of his mouth. It was the
Kaiser, come out on the balcony of the palace.

The cousin became rigid, and stood at the salute. The air seemed full
of hats and handkerchiefs and delirious shrieking. The Kaiser put up
his hand.

"Majestat is going to speak," exclaimed the Grafin, her calm fluttered
into fragments.

There was an immense instantaneous hush, uncanny after all the noise.
Only the little boy with the boxed ears continued to call out, but not
patriotically. His father, efficient and Prussian, put a stop to that
by seizing his head, buttoning it up inside his black coat, and holding
his arm tightly over it, so that no struggles of suffocation could get
it free. There was no more noise, but the little boy's legs,
desperately twitching, kicked their dusty little boots against the
cousin's shins, and he, standing at the salute with his body rigidly
turned towards Majestat, was unable to take the steps his outraged
honour, let alone the pain in his shins, called for.

I was so much interested in this situation, really absorbed by it, for
the little boy unconsciously was getting quite a lot of his own back,
his little boots being sturdy and studded with nails, and the father,
all eyes and ears for Majestat, not aware of what was happening, that
positively I missed the first part of the speech. But what I did hear
was immensely impressive. I had seen the Kaiser before, you remember;
that time he was in London with the Kaiserin, in 1912 or 1913 I think
it was, and we were staying with Aunt Angela in Wilton Crescent and we
saw him driving one afternoon in a barouche down Birdcage Walk. Do you
remember how cross he looked, hardly returning the salutations he got?
We said he and she must have be