At table the elder son was introduced--Rudolph, called Rudi, a youth of about Gard's age. There was an unseemly scar on his face and something oblique in his look. Engineering was given as his profession, but he affected the German military strut and was forward and crammed with ready-made conclusions on most subjects. But Herr Bucher reigned here as elsewhere about Villa Elsa as absolute master. He alone spoke with authority. Reverence was first of all due him. Gard soon saw how the wife and children, notwithstanding their stirring presences, were on a secondary plane. How different in the land where he had come from where they are quite free to rule in the house! The sturdy Frau was submissive, energetically helpful. But in her husband's absence she assumed his stentorian command. The manner of eating was frankly informal and ungainly. Evidences of sharp discipline one moment; the next, awkward short-cuts. The Germans have never been able to harmonize these extremes into a medium of easy formality or sightly smoothness. At the Bucher table each one reached across for the food with scarce an apology--a plan jerkily interrupted at times by Tekla, who stuck things at Gard as if she were going to hit him. The strong provender heaped up in abundance, rank in smell and usually unappetizing in color, interfered at first with his hunger. And the drinking was, of course, of a copiousness he had little dreamed of. The whole effect created a distinctly unsympathetic impression. It ran full tilt against Gard's anticipations. Rebner had led him to expect always the best among the Germans. Were they not the most advanced of humans? Were they not the patterns whom he should model himself after in the laudatory desire for self-improvement? He was naturally curious to see the young lady of the household, all the more as he wondered how she would blend into this blunt picture. She did not appear and he heard no reference to her. But there was a vacant place. Much struggling occurred over the mutual endeavors to carry on conversation. With the English which the sons had learned and with Gard's German which he found a strange article on its native ground, headway was made after a fashion. His bloodless American college variety of the language was very weak to buffet about in these billows of idioms and colloquialisms.