Poor Fred, too, has gone. He was awfully kind and amusing, but woefully unhappy. I am truly sorry for him, poor fellow, but I cannot help it. His estate up in the mountains brings in next to nothing; and we could not live upon air, first-rate as it seems to be up there. But I have something much more interesting to tell you about, and will plunge you at once in _milias res_--Latin, my love; comes from _milieu_. Where did I pick that up? Heaven only knows. I am awfully quick at learning, as my poor old governess Nagel, whom I have brought up, solemnly avers to this day. So, now, prick up your ears! Yesterday, while engaged in collecting postage stamps--you must know that one million stamps procures one a little Chinese baby; no humbug! You may trust my word for it, and send me a few thousands if you happen to have them by you--I suddenly came upon one from Würtemberg. “Who is our correspondent in Würtemberg, mamma?” “That is a secret,” answers mamma, and I see that she is burning to tell me. A few minutes later I know all about it. As a young man, papa had served in the same regiment with a Count Aich-Kronburg. Both fell in love with the same girl, a rich heiress; the Swabian was the successful lover, papa the first to congratulate him. So they remained friends. Now their son and heir, the young count, is on his travels, and is to stop at Sebenberg to do the agreeable to papa and mamma and--whom else? Mamma made me guess, and then embraced me, as our mothers have a way of doing when they hope soon to be rid of us. So my probable lord and master is a Swabian! If only I knew what he was like, and that he has not great clod-hopping feet on which to stump off to drink beer with his steward and people through the long hours of the afternoon! But, oh, my dear girl, after supper it was so deadly dull that I began to think if he had feet like an elephant I would accept him! An evening in which we are condemned to our own society, as sometimes happens now at Sebenberg, is quite too ghastly. Papa persuades himself that he is reading the _Sporting Times_, and goes fast asleep over it. Mamma knits white wraps, the patterns of which are decided by the form of her cigar ash as it falls. My uncle plays tactics with the singing-mistress, and Aunt Julia devotes herself to word-making with Fräulein Nagel. “The fifty-seventh word, Fräulein?” “A village in Servia.” “In Servia?” “Yes. It begins with a K and ends with an E.” “Kindly pass me Meyer.” “I have looked there, and cannot find it.” “Then Ritter.” And they fall to studying Ritter. There you have table No. 1. At table No. 2, at the far end of the drawing room, the little ones are playing games with the nursery governess, and I sit on the _causeuse_ in solitary state, betwixt youth and age, like Dido upon Naxos. Dear me! another classical allusion. You really must overlook it; I am so bored I am growing quite stupid. My bulldog gives a stretch and yawns at me.