I could see a smile struggling around the sweet lips of that dear girl, after I had thus delivered myself, as I fancied, with a most accurate inaccuracy; but she succeeded in repressing it, though those provoking eyes of hers continued to laugh, much of the time our interview lasted. "Oh! I very well know that in Prussia the schools are quite good, and that your government pays great attention to the wants of all classes," rejoined the clergyman; "but I confess some surprise that _you_ should understand anything of Latin. Now, even in this country, where we boast so much----" "Ye-e-s," I could not refrain from drawling out, "dey does poast a great teal in dis coontry!" Mary actually laughed; whether it was at my words, or at the somewhat comical manner I had assumed--a manner in which simplicity was _tant soit peu_ blended with irony--I shall not pretend to say. As for the father, his simplicity was of proof; and, after civilly waiting until my interruption was done, he resumed what he had been on the point of saying. "I was about to add," continued the clergyman, "that even in this country, where we boast so much"--the little minx of a daughter passed her hand over her eyes, and fairly coloured with the effort she made not to laugh again--"of the common schools, and of their influence on the public mind, it is not usual to find persons of your condition who understand the dead languages." "Ye-e-s," I replied; "it isht my condition dat misleats you, sir. Mine fat'er wast a shentlemans, and he gifet me as goot an etication as de Koenig did gif to de Kron Prinz." Here, my desire to appear well in the eyes of Mary caused me to run into another silly indiscretion. How I was to explain the circumstance of the son of a Prussian gentleman, whose father had given him an education as good as that which the King of his country had given to its Crown Prince, being in the streets of Troy, playing on a hurdy-gurdy, was a difficulty I did not reflect on for a moment. The idea of being thought by that sweet girl a mere uneducated boor, was intolerable to me; and I threw it off by this desperate falsehood--false in its accessories, but true in its main facts--as one would resent an insult. Fortune favoured me, however, far more than I had any right to expect.