WORLD'S END

and Kurt about the festivities which were coming; so much news they had to pour out, and so many plans for their ten days together! Friendship and youth make a delightful combination.

Lanny saw dark masses of buildings with many lights; he got out and was taken indoors and presented to a large family of large people: the father stout, but erect and military, with close-cut gray hair and mustaches trimmed in imitation of his Kaiser's; the kind and comfortable mother, having a great bosom ornamented with a rope of pearls; two sons, tall blond fellows straight as ramrods, with hair cut close like Kurt's, clicking their heels and bowing formally; a sister a year older than Kurt, slender, fair-haired, still in the pigtail stage, but ready to become a temporary mother to a visiting stranger. There were other relatives, a large company, all full of the sentimentality of Christmas and eager to share it with their guest.

Kurt had grown an inch or two since Lanny saw him. He was going to be a fine, tall fellow like his brothers; would he wear a monocle and turn himself into a walking ramrod? Probably so, because he admired them, and would serve his term in the army. His rather severe face was pale, because he had been working hard. But his love of Ordnung would always be tempered with the sweetness of music, and he would be Lanny's friend and appreciate the gay, easygoing disposition which Lanny had got from both mother and father. So, at any rate, Kurt assured him when they were up in Kurt's den which they were to share. He was kind and affectionate, but very serious, and talked grandly about his work and purposes, his devotion to art, and to friendship, something which one did not undertake lightly, but with deliberation and moral purpose.

V

Next morning Lanny looked out of the window and saw the great Schloss, five or six stories high, its roofs and turrets covered with fresh snow, gleaming like a Christmas card in the light of the newly risen sun. The picture made him think of all the fairy tales and romances of knights and princesses that he had ever read. To a boy who had spent most of his life on the Riviera, the mere presence of snow was an adventure; to put on his big overcoat and the mitts that Kurt lent him and go out and run, and see his breath in the air, and throw snowballs and get tumbled in a snowbank - that was fairyland. To go back into the house and be served Pfannkuchen and broiled venison for breakfast, and be told that it had been shot by Seine Majestдt himself - could you beat that for thrills?

The Graf Stubendorf and family were expected on the morning train from Berlin, and it would be better for the guest to see the castle before they arrived. So after breakfast the boys ran up the long drive through the park, and climbed the score of steps to the gray stone building; they "were admitted by bowing servants in blue uniforms, white gaiters, and white gloves. There was an entrance hall three stories high, and a reception room as big as a theater. All the front of the castle had been built in the last century, but there was an old part in the rear which was six hundred years old and had been captured and recaptured in some of those cruel wars which Lanny had been reading about on the train.

The modern part was splendid with white and gold woodwork, and walls upholstered in hand-embroidered silk, and furniture with scarlet brocade. There was a great deal of heavy carved furniture, and the general atmosphere of a museum. The old part was the most interesting to Lanny, because there were a tower and a donjon keep, an armor room, and a refectory having a huge fireplace with a black pot hanging on a hook. Lanny wondered if Pan Zagloba had ever drunk wassail in that hall. He hefted huge halberds and battle-axes, and tried to imagine what the world must have been like when men went about armored like crabs and lobsters.

They walked about the environs of the castle. It was as the farmer had said, a town, the old part medieval and crowded, the new parts well laid out. Stubendorf was a Gutsbezirk, and the Graf was a state functionary, which meant, in effect, that he had his own court of justice, police force, and jail; the feudal system combined with modern plumbing and street paving. But this didn't occur to Lanny, who was living in a lovely fairy tale.

They came back in time to witness the arrival of Seine Hochge-boren and family. The great ones drove from the station in limousines; all the servants of the castle, a hundred or two, were lined up on the steps in costumes of long ago, the men on one side, the women on the other. The uniforms of the men bore indications of their rank, while the women had white aprons and lace fichus and white cotton stockings, and wore their hair in plaits down their backs. All were drilled once a week in a system of etiquette complete to the opening of doors.