"Only the letter from the Burgomeister of Oberammergau, assigning our lodgings," he replied, carelessly. He yawned and put the letter in his pocket.
"Oh, Jimmie!" we all cried out. "Have they--"
"Have they what?" asked Jimmie, opening his eyes.
"Don't be an idiot," I said, savagely. "You know I have hardly been able to sleep, wondering if we'd have to go to ordinary lodgings or if they would assign us to some of the leading actors in the play. Tell us! Let me see the letter!"
"Now wait a minute," said Jimmie, and then I knew that he was going to be exasperating.
"Don't you let him fool you," said Bee, who always doubts everybody's good intentions and discounts their bad ones, which worthy plan of life permits her to count up at the end of the year only half as many mental bruises as I, let me pause to remark. "You know that not one in ten thousand has influence enough to obtain lodgings with the chief actors, and who are _we_, I should like to know, except in our own estimation?"
"Well," said Jimmie, meekly, "in the estimation of the Burgomeister of Oberammergau, my wife is an American princess, travelling incognito as plain Mrs. Jimmie, to avoid being mobbed by entertainers. He promises in solemn German, which I had Franz translate, not to betray her disguise."
"That makes a prince of _you_, Jimmie," I said, sternly. "A pretty looking prince _you_ are."
"Not at all," said Jimmie modestly. "I felt that I could not do the princely act very long either as to looks or fees, so I said that the princess had made a morganatic marriage, and that I was it."
"Jimmie!" said his wife, blushing scarlet. "How _could_ you? Why, a morganatic marriage isn't respectable. It's left-handed."
"My love! You are thinking of a broomstick marriage. Trust me. We are still legally married, and if I should try to sneak out of my obligations to you by this performance, I should still be liable in the eyes of the law for your debts. Let that console you."
"But--" said Mrs. Jimmie, still blushing, "by this plan they won't let us be together, will they?"
"They wouldn't anyway, as I discovered from their first letter. We are all to be lodged separately, and from the tone of that first letter, in which they addressed me as their prince, I hit on the morganatic marriage as more economical in letting him down easy, without telling him I had lied or having to pay for my lie," said Jimmie, with timid appeal in his innocent blue eyes.