. Now if any one accuses me, I get up and give it them. O,
I defend myself. I wouldn't take a fault at another person's hands, no,
not if I had it on my forehead. And that's what you must do, if you mean
to live it out. But, indeed, I never heard such nonsense. I should
think you was ashamed of yourself! You're bald, then, I suppose?'

'O no,' said Otto, fairly laughing. 'There I acquit myself: not bald!'

'Well, and good?' pursued the girl. 'Come now, you know you are good,
and I'll make you say so . . . Your Highness, I beg your humble pardon.
But there's no disrespect intended. And anyhow, you know you are.'

'Why, now, what am I to say?' replied Otto. 'You are a cook, and
excellently well you do it; I embrace the chance of thanking you for the
ragout. Well now, have you not seen good food so bedevilled by unskilful
cookery that no one could be brought to eat the pudding? That is me, my
dear. I am full of good ingredients, but the dish is worthless. I am--I
give it you in one word--sugar in the salad.'

'Well, I don't care, you're good,' reiterated Ottilia, a little flushed
by having failed to understand.

'I will tell you one thing,' replied Otto: 'You are!'

'Ah, well, that's what they all said of you,' moralised the girl; 'such a
tongue to come round--such a flattering tongue!'

'O, you forget, I am a man of middle age,' the Prince chuckled.

'Well, to speak to you, I should think you was a boy; and Prince or no
Prince, if you came worrying where I was cooking, I would pin a napkin to
your tails. . . . And, O Lord, I declare I hope your Highness will
forgive me,' the girl added. 'I can't keep it in my mind.'

'No more can I,' cried Otto. 'That is just what they complain of!'

They made a loverly-looking couple; only the heavy pouring of that
horse-tail of water made them raise their voices above lovers' pitch.
But to a jealous onlooker from above, their mirth and close proximity
might easily give umbrage; and a rough voice out of a tuft of brambles
began calling on Ottilia by name. She changed colour at that. 'It is
Fritz,' she said. 'I must go.'

'Go, my dear, and I need not bid you go in peace, for I think you have
discovered that I am not formidable at close quarters,' said the Prince,
and made her a fine gesture of dismissal.

So Ottilia skipped up the bank, and disappeared into the thicket,
stopping once for a single blushing bob--blushing, because she had in the
interval once