He could not, however, always forget that he was a Hapsburg while she was a burgher girl, and his good memory got him many a keen little thrust from her saucy tongue.

If Max resented her sauciness, she ran away from him with the full knowledge that he would miss her.

She was much surer that she pleased and delighted him than he was that he pleased her, though of the latter fact she left, in truth, little room for doubt.
Max was very happy.

He had never before known a playmate.

But here in Basel the good Franz and his frau, Yolanda, Twonette, fat old Castleman, and myself were all boys and girls together, snatching the joys of life fresh from the soil of mother earth, close to which we lived in rustic simplicity.
Since we had left Styria, our life, with all its hardships, had been a delight to Max, but it was also a series of constantly repeated shocks.
If the shocks came too rapidly and too hard, he solaced his bruised dignity with the thought that those who were unduly familiar with him did not know that he was the heir of the House of Hapsburg.