They never desire to go on the stage, never want a vote, and are perfectly content with the limited prospect which life offers to their sex. So in their ill-fitting black frocks, in hard, round, black straw sailor hats, with their luxuriant hair strained brutally off their foreheads into the tightest, hardest of coils, every morning came three little girls to share the studies and recreations of the Princess. There had been some heart-burning among the parents of the young ladies of the _Stift_, as each one considered that her child had peculiar qualifications as a possible companion to royalty; but the final decision lay in the hands of the head-mistress and the tutor of the Princess, and the choice ultimately made was undoubtedly a wise one, though sometimes the more unregenerate officers of His Majesty’s suite ventured the opinion that the girls in question were “_zu gut erzogen_"--too well brought up--from which it may be gathered that they desired to see a little more natural, healthy naughtiness exhibited. It is, however, unreasonable to expect a child, even if endowed with gifts in this direction, not to put a good many curbs on her inclination when she is chosen to share the comparatively pleasant life at Court in exchange for that of the _Stift_; and as they were expressly encouraged to assert their own rights and not to let the Princess always win at the games they played--a deplorable tendency which had its root as much in the Princess’s superiority at games as in the ill-advised instructions of foolish parents--they soon discovered, as children will, a democratic level of existence which was invaluable as an educational factor. Each child, including the Princess, was called by her Christian name, and it was a matter for congratulation when one of the “_Stifts-Kinder_,” as they were called, was found to have an immense superiority over the Princess in the matter of evolutions on the parallel bars. This quartette of young people worked and played together amicably for some years--until, in fact, the time approached for the confirmation of the Princess, that great event in the life of a German girl which seems to make a sharp, decided finish to her childhood and flings her full-fledged into a new existence. When the Court was staying in Berlin, the _Stifts-Kinder_ came under a lady’s escort by train every morning from Potsdam to Berlin, where they were driven straight to Belle Vue. They had four little desks side by side in one of the big empty salons there, and their cheerful faces and gay shrieks of laughter as they jumped over the flower-beds in the intervals of lessons, or in wet weather chased each other through the stately rooms with their decorous suites of brocaded furniture, added a pleasant element of youth and freshness to the old palace.