"You're going to stay with us, mother, aren't you?" said Jean wistfully. "You're not going to leave us here all alone like we were last year?"
Mrs. Corner smiled at the aggrieved tone. "I shall stay here till after Christmas anyhow," she promised, "and then if I must go away for the coldest months we shall all be together in Italy by the first of April."
Jean sighed. After so much freedom it was hard to adjust one's self to school routine, and as yet she had not settled down to the new conditions. "Shall we have to wear funny hats and do our hair in braids up over the tops of our heads or around our ears like the German girls do?" asked the little girl whose looks were something of a matter of pride to her.
"I think you will do as you have always done in that direction," her mother told her. "You are not a German girl, you know."
"But Fräulein is very particular," spoke up Jack. "To-day one of the German girls came with her hair done like ours, and Fräulein marched her out of the room and slicked up her hair and braided it so tight her eyes almost popped out of her head. She came back looking so scared."
"And, oh, dear," groaned Jean, "we have to walk along so soberly when we go out for exercise. We don't dare turn our heads, and the girls look so creer in those funny little flat hats, as if they had crackers on their heads. I feel like a craker, or something, myself."
"Do you mean a cracker or a Quaker?" asked Jack mischievously.
"I mean a craker that you spell with a cu," replied Jean with dignity.
"Look here," said Nan laughing, "you youngsters mustn't begin to whine the minute we get here. Goodness! do you suppose there are not thousands of girls who would give their eyes to be in this beautiful place and have the chances you have? We have been junketing around for so long that we don't want to do anything else. Every mother's daughter of us has got to work; that is what we came to Munich for, and between times we shall have more to see than you would get in any other dozen cities rolled into one."
"It's all very well for you to talk," said Jack. "You are going to operas and grown-up things like that, and we can't."
"But you can do other things, and the operas and concerts are a part of my musical education; they would bore you to death. There are ever so many things for you to do."