Page:T.M. Royal Highness.djvu/146

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ROYAL HIGHNESS

the Grenadier Guards, and his sword-hilt hung on his arm. Neumann, in a violet coat whose arms were too short, ran in front of him down the steps and with his red barber's hands packed his master's folded grey over-coat into the cart. Then, while the coachman, his hand to his cockaded hat, inclined a little sideways on the box, the valet arranged the light carriage rug over Klaus Heinrich's knees and stepped back with a silent bow. The horses started off.

Outside the garden gates a few promenaders had collected. They greeted Klaus Heinrich, smiling with knitted brows and hats lifted, and Klaus Heinrich thanked them by raising his white-gloved right hand to the peak of his cap and making a succession of lively nods.

They skirted a piece of waste ground along a birch avenue, whose leaves were already turning, and then drove through the suburb, between poverty-stricken houses, over unpaved streets, where the ragged children left their hoops and tops for a moment to gaze at the carriage with curious eyes. Some cried, Hurrah ! and ran for a while by the side of the carriage, with heads turned towards Klaus Heinrich. The carriage might have taken the road by the Spa-gardens; but that through the suburb was shorter, and time pressed. Ditlinde was particular on points of regularity, and easily put out if anybody disturbed her household arrangements by unpunctuality.

Yonder was the Dorothea Children's Hospital of which Doctor Sammet, Ueberbein's friend, was the Director; Klaus Heinrich drove by it. And then the carriage left the squalid neighbourhood and reached the Gartenstrasse, a stately tree-planted avenue, in which lay the houses and villas of wealthy citizens, and along which ran the tram-line from the Spa Gardens to the centre of the city. The traffic here was fairly heavy, and Klaus Heinrich was kept busy answering the greetings which met him. Civilians took off their hats and looked from under their eyebrows