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72 self-conscious. He was well aware that his parents had not been able to refuse Baron von Knobelsdorff's invitation, but that it had not seemed to them by any means a blessing from the clouds, and that he, Count Bogumil, could have lived much better and more in accordance with his position on his father's property than at the "Pheasantry." He found the hacks bad, the landau shabby, and the dog-cart old-fashioned; he grumbled privately over the food.

Dagobert Count Trummerhauff, a spare, greyhound-looking youth, who spoke in a whisper, was inseparable from him. They had a word among themselves which fully expressed their critical and aristocratic bent, and which they constantly uttered in a biting tone of voice: "hog-wash." It was hog-wash to have loose collars buttoning on to one's shirt. It was hog-wash to play lawn-tennis in one's ordinary clothes.

But Klaus Heinrich felt himself unequal to using the word. He had not hitherto been aware that there were such things as shirts with collars sewed on to them and that people could possess so many changes of clothes at one time as Bogumil Prenzlau. He would have liked to say "hog-wash," but it occurred to him that he was wearing at that very time darned socks. He felt inelegant by the side of Prenzlau and coarse compared with Trümmerhauff. Trümmerhauff had the nobility of a wild beast. He had a long pointed nose with a sharp bridge and broad, quivering, thin-walled nostrils, blue veins on his delicate temples and small ears without lobes. He wore broad coloured cuffs fastened with gold links, and his hands were like those of a dainty woman, with filbert nails; a gold bracelet adorned one of his wrists. He half closed his eyes as he whispered.&hellip; No, it was obvious that Klaus Heinrich could not compete with Trümmerhauff in elegance. His right hand was rather broad, he had cheek bones like the men in the street, and he looked quite stumpy by Dagobert's side. It