Page:T.M. Royal Highness.djvu/90

74 brought into the light or even being thought of, wild, remote things, to which, however, Doctor Ueberbein himself sometimes alluded—when, for instance, the lordlings, who could not forget his obscure origin, behaved impudently or unbecomingly towards him.

"Suck-a-thumbs and mammy's darlings!" he would say then in loud dudgeon. "I've knocked about long enough to deserve some respect from you young gentlemen!" This fact too, that Doctor Ueberbein had "knocked about" did not fail of effect on Klaus Heinrich. But the especial charm of the doctor's person lay in the directness of his attitude towards Klaus Heinrich, the tone in which he addressed him from the very beginning, and which distinguished him clearly from everybody else. There was nothing about him which reminded one of the stiff reticence of the lackeys, of the governess's pale horror, of Schulrat Dröge's professional bows, or of Professor Kürtchen's self-satisfied deference. There was nothing about him to recall the strange, loyal, and yet impertinent way in which people outside stared at Klaus Heinrich.

During the first few days after the seminary assembled, he kept silence and confined himself to observation, but then he approached the Prince with a jovial and cheery frankness, a fresh fatherly camaraderie such as Klaus Heinrich had never before experienced. It disturbed him at first, he looked in terror at the doctor's green face; but his confusion found no echo in the doctor, and in no way discouraged him, it confirmed him in his hearty bumptious ingenuousness, and it was not long before Klaus Heinrich was warmed and won, for there was nothing vulgar, nothing degrading, not even anything designed and school-masterish in Doctor Ueberbein's methods—all they showed was the superiority of a man who had knocked about the world, and, at the same time, his tender and open respect for Klaus Heinrich's different birth and position; they showed