em in the same
light.

They went into a side avenue, where Walpurga sat down on a bench and,
falling into a reverie, soon knew as little of the world as did the
child in her arms.

"Who's there?" said she, as if awakened from sleep.

Riding between two horsemen, she beheld a lady mounted on a glossy
black steed. Her riding-habit was of blue and the long flowing veil
fastened to her hat was of the same color.

"It looks like the countess."

"It is she, and now they dismount. His majesty the king and their royal
highnesses the hereditary prince and princess, are with her. They are
coming this way," said Mademoiselle Kramer. "Keep your seat. As nurse,
you need not trouble about being polite."

But Walpurga could not help putting her hands up to her hat, in order
to feel whether the tassel at the back and the flowers in front were
still in place.

Mademoiselle Kramer begged their highnesses not to look at the sleeping
child, lest they might awaken it.

Irma was the first to speak. "How deeply significant are all of
nature's laws. The waking eye arouses the sleeping child. In the depths
of every human soul, an infant soul rests sleeping, and it is not well
to permit either sympathy or idle curiosity to disturb it."

"I would like to know how you always manage to have such original
thoughts," replied the king.

"I don't know," replied Irma, playing with her riding-whip. "I've
courage enough to say what I think, and that passes for originality.
Nearly all human beings are changelings. They were changed while in the
cradle of education."

The king laughed. Walpurga, however, quickly turned her thumbs inward,
and said:

"Changelings. It's wrong to speak of anything of that sort before a
child that's less than seven months old, for the evil spirits are all
powerful up to that time, even if the child is christened."

In order to exorcise any evil spell from the child, she breathed upon
it thrice.

The princess looked sadly at the nurse and the child, but did not utter
a word.

"I don't understand a word of what the nurse says," remarked the
hereditary prince.

Walpurga blushed scarlet.

"Why do you look at me so?" asked Countess Irma, "don't you know me?"

"Of course I do, but do you know who you look like? like the Lady of
the Lake. When she rises from the waves, her dress hangs about her in a
sea of folds just like yours."

Irma laughed, while she, in High German, told the prince and princess
what the