_Wilhelm._ Do not let her plague you, papa; but take me between your knees (I am too old to sit upon them), and tell me all about the Turks, and how you ran away from them. _Countess._ Wilhelm! if your father had run away from the enemy, we should not have been deprived of him two whole years. _Wilhelm._ I am hardly such a child as to suppose that a Christian knight would run away from a rebel Turk in battle. But even Christians are taken, somehow, by their tricks and contrivances, and their dog Mahomet. Beside, you know you yourself told me, with tear after tear, and scolding me for mine, that papa was taken by them. _Annabella._ Neither am I, who am only one year younger, so foolish as to believe there is any dog Mahomet. And, if there were, we have dogs that are better and faithfuller and stronger. _Wilhelm._ [_To his father._] I can hardly help laughing to think what curious fancies girls have about Mahomet. We know that Mahomet is a dog-spirit with three horsetails. _Annabella._ Papa! I am glad to see you smile at Wilhelm. I do assure you he is not half so bad a boy as he was, although he did point at me, and did tell you some mischief. _Count._ I ought to be indeed most happy at seeing you all again. _Annabella._ And so you are. Don't pretend to look grave now. I very easily find you out. I often look grave when I am the happiest. But forth it bursts at last: there is no room for it in tongue, or eyes, or anywhere. _Count._ And so, my little angel, you begin to recollect me. _Annabella._ At first I used to dream of papa, but at last I forgot how to dream of him: and then I cried, but at last I left off crying. And then, papa, who could come to me in my sleep, seldom came again. _Count._ Why do you now draw back from me, Annabella? _Annabella._ Because you really are so very very brown: just like those ugly Turks who sawed the pines in the saw-pit under the wood, and who refused to drink wine in the heat of summer, when Wilhelm and I brought it to them. Do not be angry; we did it only once. _Wilhelm._ Because one of them stamped and frightened her when the other seemed to bless us. _Count._ Are they still living? _Countess._ One of them is. _Wilhelm._ The fierce one. _Count._ We will set him free, and wish it were the other. _Annabella._ Papa! I am glad you are come back without your spurs. _Countess._ Hush, child, hush. _Annabella._ Why, mamma? Do not you remember how they tore my frock when I clung to him at parting? Now I begin to think of him again: I lose everything between that day and this. _Countess._ The girl's idle prattle about the spurs has pained you: always too sensitive; always soon hurt, though never soon offended. _Count._ O God! O my children! O my wife! it is not the loss of spurs I now must blush for. _Annabella._ Indeed, papa, you never can blush at all, until you cut that horrid beard off. _Countess._ Well may you say, my own Ludolph, as you do; for most gallant was your bearing in the battle.