have a niece," said the policeman, watching Fritzing at work;
"but I light no lamps for her. One should not wait on one's niece.
One's niece should wait on one."

Fritzing did not answer. He finished lighting the lamps, and then
held Priscilla's bicycle and started her.

"I never did that for my niece," said the policeman.

"Confound your niece, sir," was on the tip of Fritzing's tongue; but
he gulped it down, and remarking instead as pleasantly as he could
that being an uncle did not necessarily prevent your being a
gentleman, picked up his bicycle and followed Priscilla.

The policeman shook his head as they disappeared round the corner.
"One does not light lamps for one's niece," he repeated to himself.
"It's against nature. Consequently, though the peppery Fraeulein may
well be somebody's niece she is not his."

"Oh," murmured Priscilla, after they had ridden some way without
speaking, "I'm deteriorating already. For the first time in my life
I've wanted to box people's ears."

"The provocation was great, ma'am," said Fritzing, himself shattered
by the spectacle of his Princess being lifted about by a policeman.

"Do you think--" Priscilla hesitated, and looked at him. Her bicycle
immediately hesitated too, and swerving across the road taught her it
would have nothing looked at except its handles. "Do you think," she
went on, after she had got herself straight again, "that the way I'm
going to live now will make me want to do it often?"

"Heaven forbid, ma'am. You are now going to live a most noble
life--the only fitting life for the thoughtful and the earnest. It
will be, once you are settled, far more sheltered from contact with
that which stirs ignoble impulses than anything your Grand Ducal
Highness has hitherto known."

"If you mean policemen by things that stir ignoble impulses," said
Priscilla, "I was sheltered enough from them before. Why, I never
spoke to one. Much less"--she shuddered--"much less ever touched one."

"Ma'am, you do not repent?"

"Heavens, no," said Priscilla, pressing onward.

Outside Ruehl, about a hundred yards before its houses begin, there is
a pond by the wayside. Into this, after waiting a moment peering up
and down the dark road to see whether anybody was looking, Fritzing
hurled the bicycles. He knew the pond was deep, for he had studied it
the day he bought Priscilla's outfit; and the two bicycles one after
the other were hurled remorsely into the middle of it, disapp