"One must make the best of a bad job," answered the General in the same tone. Elsa was a little surprised; she had not thought that he would have taken so seriously the question of etiquette which he had decided according to her view. She did not consider that her father could not understand her words without some explanation, and did not know that he had given them quite another meaning. He had been put out, and had allowed his annoyance to be seen--even when they were received in the hall. He thought that this had not escaped Elsa, and that she was pleased now to see that he had meanwhile made up his mind to submit quietly and calmly to the inevitable, and therefore met him with a smile. The young sailor had only been recalled to his mind by the Count's question. He had attached no importance to the question or to his own answer, that he did not know why the Count should not invite Captain Schmidt to his table. Happily for Reinhold himself he had not even a suspicion of the possibility that his appearance or non-appearance at table could be a question to be seriously discussed by the other members of the party. "What is begun may as well be continued," said he to himself, as with the help of the things he had brought with him in a handbag from the ship in case of accidents, he arranged his dress as well as he could; "and now away with melancholy. If I have got aground by my own stupidity, I shall get off again in time. To go about hanging my head, or losing it, would not make up for my folly, but only make matters worse, and they are quite bad enough already. But where are my shoes?" At the last moment on board he had changed the shoes he was wearing for a pair of high seaboots. They had been most useful to him since through rain and puddles, in the wet sands on the shore, and on the way to the farm; but now! Where were the shoes? Not in the bag, at any rate, into which he thought he had thrown them, and out of which they would not appear, although at last in his despair he tumbled all the things out and strewed them around him. And this garment which he had taken up a dozen times and let fall again, half the skirt was missing. It was not his blue frockcoat, it was his black tailcoat, the most precious article in his wardrobe, which he had only been in the habit of wearing for a dinner with his owners, or the consul, and on other most solemn occasions.