For some particularly ingenious evil spirit or other had taken the Heimlicher von Blaise, and so set him down, promenading in the open air, that the advocate must needs come within shooting range and hailing distance of him just on a feast of the Annunciation for _good_ folks only. When the guardian went through the proper forms of salutation--accompanying them with a smile such as, fortunately, can never be seen on a child's face--Siebenkæs returned his salutes politely, although with a mere clutching and jerking at his hat--which he didn't take off. Lenette tried to make amends for this, by doubling the profundity of her own bow and curtsey; but as soon as practicable she administered to her husband a garden lecture, or, rather, a garden _paling_ lecture, on his always, as if on purpose, irritating his guardian whenever he had an opportunity. "Indeed, love," he said, "I couldn't help it. I really meant nothing of the kind to-day, of all days in the year." The truth of the matter, indeed, is, that Siebenkæs had sometime before complained to his wife that his hat, which was of softish felt, was getting a good deal spoiled by having to be so often taken off to people in the streets, and that he could think of nothing better than to protect it with a coat of mail in the shape of a stiff cover of green oilskin, so that when packed up in this pudding roll he might go on daily employing it in those offices of out-door politeness which men owe one to another, without ever having to take hold of the hat _itself_ at all. Well, the first walk he took after assuming this double hat, or hat's hat, was to a grocer's, where he disembowelled the inner one from its envelope and swopped it away for six pounds of coffee, which warmed the four chambers of his brain better than the hare-skin had ever done; he then went tranquilly home, with only the coadjutor hat on his head, undetected, and thenceforward bore the empty case through the streets with a secret joy that, in a sense, he now really took off his _hat_ to nobody--with other entertaining fancies bearing on the subject of his sugar-loaf. Of course, when he forgot--and on that day in particular, it was perhaps excusable that he did so--to support his hat-case with the necessary framework of artificial rafters, it was really almost an impossibility to take this mere shell of a hat _right_ OFF for purposes of salutation. The most he could do was just to _touch_ it courteously, like an officer returning a salute; and thus, against his will, play the part of a rude and ill-bred individual. And it so happened that just on this very day get it off he could not.