"But it would shock my father dreadfully if he knew.

The Kaiser looks on him as the type and model of the English nobleman." Michael crunched one of the inimitable breakfast rusks in his teeth.
"Lord, what a day we had when he was at Ashbridge last year," he said.
"We began at eight with a review of the Suffolk Yeomanry; then we had a pheasant shoot from eleven till three; then the Emperor had out a steam launch and careered up and down the river till six, asking a thousand questions about the tides and the currents and the navigable channels.
Then he lectured us on the family portraits till dinner; after dinner there was a concert, at which he conducted the 'Song to Aegir,' and then there was a torch-light fandango by the tenants on the lawn.

He was on his holiday, you must remember." "I heard the 'Song to Aegir' once," remarked Falbe, with a perfectly level intonation.
"I was--er--luckier," said Michael politely, "because on that occasion I heard it twice.

It was encored." "And what did it sound like the second time ?" asked Falbe.
"Much as before," said Michael.
The advent of the Emperor had put the whole town in a ferment.

Though the visit was quite incognito, an enormous military staff which had been poured into the town might have led the thoughtful to suspect the Kaiser's presence, even if it had not been announced in the largest type in the papers, and marchings and counter-marchings of troops and sudden bursts of national airs proclaimed the august presence.