I laughed, and Frau Bornsted looked sedately indulgent,—­I suppose because he is a great man, this staff officer, who helps work out all the wonderful plans that are some day to make Germany able to conquer the world; but, as she explained to me the other day when I said something about her eyelashes being so long and pretty, prettiness is out of place in her position, and she prefers it not mentioned.  “What has the wife of an Oberforster to do with prettiness?” she asked.  “It is good for a junges Madchen, who has still to find a husband, but once she has him why be pretty?  To be pretty when you are a married woman is only an undesirability.  It exposes one easily to comment, and might cause, if one had not a solid character, an ever-afterwards-to-be-regretted expenditure on clothes.”

The men were going to shoot with the Oberforster after breakfast and be all day in the forest, and the Colonel was going back to Berlin by the night train.  He said he was leaving his lieutenant at Koseritz for a few days, but that he himself had to get back into harness at once,—­“While the young one plays around,” he said, slapping Herr von Inster on the back this time instead of the Oberforster, “among the varied and delightful flora of our old German forests.  Here this nosegay,” he said, sweeping his arm in our direction, “and there at Koseritz—­” sweeping his arm in the other direction, “a nosegay no less charming but more hot-house,—­the schone Helena and her young lady friends.”

I asked Herr von Inster after breakfast, when we were alone for a moment in the garden, what his Colonel was like after dinner, if even breakfast made him so jovial.

“He is very clever,” he said.  “He is one of our cleverest officers on the Staff, and this is how he hides it.”

“Oh,” I said; for I thought it a funny explanation.  Why hide it?

Perhaps that is what’s the matter with the Graf,—­he’s hiding how clever he is.

But that Colonel certainly does seem clever.  He asked where we live in England; a poser, rather, considering we don’t at present live at all; but I told him where we did live, when Dad was alive.

“Ah,” he said, “that is in Sussex.  Very pretty just there.  Which house was your home?”

I stared a little, for it seemed waste of time to describe it, but I said it was an old house on an open green.

“Yes,” he said, nodding, “on the common.  A very nice, roomy old house, with good outbuildings.  But why do you not straighten out those corners on the road to Petworth?  They are death traps.”

“You’ve been there, then?” I said, astonished at the extreme smallness of the world.

“Never,” he said, laughing.  “But I study.  We study, don’t we, Inster my boy, at the old General Staff.  And tell your Sussex County Council, beautiful English lady, to straighten out those corners, for they are very awkward indeed, and might easily cause serious accidents some day when the roads have to be used for real traffic.”