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From the arsenals they went to visit the parade-ground of the garrison, and came in time to see a manoeuvre of the troops, at which they looked with the frank respect and reserved superiority with which our veterans seem to regard the military of Europe. Then they walked about and noted the principal monuments of the city, and strolled along the promenades and looked at the handsome officers and the beautiful women. Colonel Kenton admired the life and the gay movement everywhere; since leaving Paris he had seen nothing so much like New York. But he did not like their shovelling up the snow into carts everywhere and dumping all that fine sleighing into the Danube. “By the way,” said his friend, “let’s go over into Leopoldstadt, and see if we can’t scare up a sleigh for a little turn in the suburbs.”

“It’s getting late, isn’t it?” asked the colonel.

“Not so late as it looks. You know we haven’t the high American sun, here.”

Colonel Kenton was having such a good time that he felt no trouble about his wife, sitting over her mending in the Kaiserin Elisabeth; and he yielded joyfully, thinking how much she would like to hear about the suburbs of Vienna: a husband will go through almost any pleasure in order to give his wife an entertaining account of it afterwards; besides, a bachelor companionship is confusing: it makes many things appear right and feasible which are perhaps not so. It was not till their driver, who had turned out of the beaten track into a wayside drift to make room for another vehicle, attempted to regain the road by too abrupt a movement, and the shafts of their sledge responded with a loud crick-crack, that Colonel Kenton perceived the error into which he had suffered himself to be led. At three miles’ distance from the city, and with the winter twilight beginning to fall, he felt the pang of a sudden remorse. It grew sorer with every homeward step and with each successive failure to secure a conveyance for their return. In fine, they trudged back to Leopoldstadt, where an absurd series of discomfitures awaited them in their attempts to get a fiacre over into the main city. They visited all the stands known to the consul, and then they were obliged to walk. But they were not tired, and they made their distance so quickly that Colonel Kenton’s spirits rose again. He was able for the first time to smile at their misadventure, and some misgivings as to how Mrs. Kenton might stand affected towards a guest under the circumstances yielded to the thought of how he should make her laugh at them both. “Good old Davis!” mused the colonel, and affectionately linked his arm through that of his friend; and they stamped through the brilliantly lighted streets gay with uniforms and the picturesque costumes with which the Levant at Vienna encounters the London and Paris fashions. Suddenly the consul arrested their movement. “Didn’t you say you were stopping at the Kaiserin Elisabeth?”

“Why, yes; certainly.”

“Well, it’s just around the corner, here.” The consul turned him about, and in another minute they walked under an archway into a court-yard, and were met by the portier at the door of his room with an inquiring obeisance.

Colonel Kenton started. The cap and the cap-band were the same, and it was to all intents and purposes the same portier who had bowed him away in the morning; but the face was different. On noting this fact Colonel Kenton observed so general a change in the appointments and even architecture of the place that, “Old fellow,” he said to the consul, “you’ve made a little mistake; this isn’t the Kaiserin Elisabeth.”

The consul referred the matter to the portier. Perfectly; that was the Kaiserin Elisabeth. “Well, then,” said the colonel, “tell him to have us shown to my room.” The portier discovered a certain embarrassment when the colonel’s pleasure was made known to him, and ventured something in reply which made the consul smile.