Page:T.M. Royal Highness.djvu/230

214 Finally they walked to one of the three windows of the ward and looked out over the squalid suburb, down into the street where, surrounded by children, the brown Court carriage and Imma's smart dark-red motor car stood one behind the other. The Spoelmanns' chauffeur, shapeless in his fur coat, was leaning back in his seat with one hand on the steering-wheel of the powerful car, and watched his companion, the footman in white, trying to start a conversation, by the carriage in front, with Klaus Heinrich's coachman.

"Our neighbours," said Doctor Sammet, holding back the white net curtain with one hand, "are the parents of our patients. Late in the evening the tipsy fathers roll shouting by. Yes."

They stood and listened, but Doctor Sammet said nothing further about the fathers and so they broke off, as they had now seen everything.

The procession, with Klaus Heinrich and Imma at the head, proceeded down the staircase and found the nurses again assembled in the front hall. Leave was taken with compliments and clapping together of heels, curtseys, and bows. Klaus Heinrich, standing stiffly in front of Doctor Sammet, who listened to him with his head on one side and his hand on his watch-chain, expressed himself, in his wonted form of words, highly satisfied with what he had seen, while he felt that Imma Spoelmann's great eyes were resting upon him. He, with Herr von Braunbart, accompanied Miss Spoelmann to her car when the leave-taking from the surgeons and nurses was over. Klaus Heinrich and Miss Spoelmann, while they crossed the pavement between children and women with children in their arms, and for a short time by the broad step of the motor car, exchanged the following remarks:

"It has been a great pleasure to meet you," he said.