We walked together towards the house, which had opened several of its green eyelids now, and at the mouth of a sort of stucco tunnel which led to the door there was Joseph himself--a piteous, dishevelled Joseph, looking as if birds had built nests on him and spiders had woven webs round him for years. "Well," exclaimed the Prince with the air of one warding off a blow. "What has happened? Have you burnt my automobile, or are you always like this when you get up early?" "I am not an incendiary, Your Highness," said Joseph, in his precise French, which it's easy to understand, because when he wishes to be dignified he speaks slowly. "I do not know what I am like, unless it is a wreck, in which case I resemble your automobile. As you left her last night, so she is now, and so she is likely to remain, unless the gentlemen of the other car will have the beneficence to pull her up a still further and more violent hill to the village of Tenda. There finds himself the only mechanic within fifty miles." "I engaged _you_ as a mechanic!" cried the Prince. "But not as a workshop, Your Highness. That I am not and shall not be this side of Paradise. And it is a workshop that we must have." "Do not let me keep you, Miss Beechy," said the Prince, "if you wish to go to your Mamma. This little difficulty will arrange itself." I adore rows, and I should have liked to stay; but I couldn't think of any excuse, so I skipped into the house, and almost telescoped (as they say of railroad trains) with the nice monk, who was talking to Maida in the hall. I supposed she was telling him about the Sisters, but she was quite indignant at the suggestion, and said she had been asking if we could have breakfast in the garden. The monk had given his consent, and she had intended to have everything arranged out doors, as a surprise, by the time we all came down. "Aunt Kathryn is up; I've been doing her hair," explained Maida, "but we didn't hear a sound from your room, so we decided not to disturb you. What _have_ you been about, you weird child?" "Playing dolls," said I, and ran off to help Mamma put on her complexion. But it was on already, all except the icing. I confessed the Prince to her, and she looked at me sharply. "Don't forget that you're a little girl now, Beechy," she reminded me. "What were you talking about?" "You and my other dolls, Mamma," said I. "Even when I was seventeen I never flirted fasting." "What did you say about me, dearest?" "Oh, it was the Prince who said things about you. You can have him to play with, if you want to." "Darling, you shouldn't talk of playing. This is a very serious consideration," said Mamma. "I never heard much about Austrians at home. Most foreigners there were Germans, which made one think of beer and sausages. I do wonder what standing an Austrian Prince would have in Denver? Should you suppose he would be preferred to--to persons of less exalted rank who were--who were not quite so _foreign_?"