“Try to say ‘they,’ not ‘zey,’” I interpose, hoping to divert his thoughts to other subjects. “Joachim can’t speak English one bit,” says his sister; “he says ‘zey’ and ‘zese’ and ‘zose,’ and ‘I drink your healse.’ He is a silly boy; he can’t jump, he can’t play tennis, he can’t ride----;” and so on _ad infinitum_. Twice a week after we have finished supper I take Prince Joachim away and read English with him in his room, while the Governor sits listening in a chair, his long red-striped military grey legs stretched out before him, his hands clasped on his knee, an absorbed, concentrated look in his eyes. The book chosen is Stevenson’s immortal “Treasure Island,” for the Prince has stipulated that whatever we read shall not be about _Muster-Kinder_, which I interpret as meaning “pattern-children,” the kind abounding in certain books, but happily seldom met with in real life. I consider it a hopeful and healthy sign in the Prince, his objection to _Muster-Kinder_, and promise that my reading shall be blameless in this particular respect. He seems a little suspicious as we settle down and I open at the first chapter, but before many pages have been turned he is holding his breath to listen, and his verdict on my choice of a book is that it is magnificent--_prachtvoll_. It may here be remarked that there are few if any original books in the German language written especially for boys, who have to content themselves with translations of Fenimore Cooper’s works, “Robinson Crusoe” and “The Swiss Family Robinson,” and of late years with the “Adventures” of the famous Sherlock Holmes, who has a great vogue upon the Continent, and whose history may be bought at almost every railway bookstall abroad. Not only the Prince, but also the Governor, in spite of his thirty years and his military experience, immediately fall under the spell of the story, notwithstanding the many words in it of which they do not know the meaning. When the hour comes to an end and the Prince begs for an extension of his lesson, the Governor pulls out his watch and after a slight hesitation, smilingly grants another ten minutes before bed-time. “_Schnell, schnell_,"--“quick, quick,” implores the Prince, and I hurry on towards the fatal Black Spot and the fate of the blind man, and am pressed to come again as soon as possible and not wait till the lesson becomes due, because they both--Prince and Governor--are so anxious to know what happens next. At the end of the following week the court is to leave Homburg for its permanent residence--if anything so unpermanent can be so termed--in the New Palace near Potsdam, where the _Ober-Gouvernante_ will be waiting to share my multifarious labours, and where I am assured that the regular routine--“only we never have any regular routine, it is always being broken,” sighs the Countess--at any rate an approximate routine may be confidently anticipated.