Page:The man on horseback (IA manonhorseback00abdurich).pdf/51

Rh sudden rise to fortune and the scientific one of the unknown metal, passed into the limbo of familiar things when—it was late in May of the year Nineteen Hundred and Thirteen, over fourteen months before the outbreak of the gigantic Prussian Crime—a new sensation electrified Spokane society.

For Bertha Wedekind remarked, quite casually, at the occasion of a supper dance given by her chum, Virginia Ryan, that a friend of hers from Berlin was coming to Spokane in a few days.

Virginia smiled superciliously. She had met a number of Germans and made no secret of the fact that she considered them very worthy, very respectable, and frightfully bad form.

"Oh—we'll try and be nice to him," she said.

Bertha smiled triumphantly.

“You won't have to try so very hard,” she retorted. "You see, my friend is an officer in a crack regiment, my Uncle Heinrich's regiment. His name is Baron Horst von Götz-Wrede, and you should see him in his uniform—blue and silver! Perfectly gorgeous, my dear!"

Virginia collapsed while Tom, who sat next to Bertha, felt something tug at his heart-strings.

It was later in the evening, as he helped Mrs. Wedekind on with her coat, that the kindly old New England woman put her thin, wrinkled hands on his shoulders and said, with that sudden abruptness of hers, that he needn't worry. "Young girls will be young girls. But—they get over it!"

Tom was taken aback.

"Then you You know?" He stammered.

"Of course. I am a mother, and I have eyes in my head," she smiled, "though I do wear spectacles."