Page:H.M. The Patrioteer.djvu/266

258 behind the scenes. "We were awfully frightened when they kept on saying: 'tea, coffee, tea,'" Guste declared. "Next time Wolfgang will write a much finer play and I'll have a part," At this Inge disengaged her arm and assumed an expression of chaste repulsion. "Oh, indeed?" she said, and Guste's fat face at once lost its harmless air of enthusiasm.—"Why not, may I ask?" she said, tearfully indignant. —"What on earth is wrong with you again?" Diederich, who could have told her, turned back hastily to old Buck, who talked on.

"We have the same friends nowadays as in former times, and the same enemies too. But he has almost faded out, that armoured knight, the children's bogey there in the niche near the gate. Don Antonio Manrique, you cruel cavalier, who laid poor Netzig under contribution in the Thirty Years' War, where would even the faintest echo of your fame be, if Riekestrasse had not been named after you? experi He was another of those who did not like our sense of freedom and thought he could destroy us."

Suddenly a silent chuckle shook the old man. He took Diederich's hand: "Don't you think he looks like our Herr von Wulckow?"

Diederich looked very solemn, but the old man did not notice it. Now that he had once started, other things occurred to him. He motioned to Diederich to follow him behind a group of plants, and showed him two figures on the wall, a young shepherd, whose arms were opened longingly, and on the other side of the brook a shepherdess, who was preparing to jump across. Herr Buck whispered: "What do you think? Do you believe they will meet? Very few people know that now, but I still remember." He looked round to make sure he was not being watched, then suddenly he opened a little door which nobody would ever have discovered. The shepherdess on the door moved towards her lover. A little more, and she would lie in his arms in the dark behind the door. &hellip; The old man pointed to the room which he had