In a German Pension | Page 6

and hugged my knees. Then--magic moment--I heard voices from
the summer-house, the sister of the Baroness and the student from
Bonn.

Second-hand was better than nothing; I pricked up my ears.
"What small hands you have," said the student from Bonn. "They are
like white lilies lying in the pool of your black dress." This certainly
sounded the real thing. Her high-born reply was what interested me.
Sympathetic murmur only.
"May I hold one?"
I heard two sighs--presumed they held--he had rifled those dark waters
of a noble blossom.
"Look at my great fingers beside yours."
"But they are beautifully kept," said the sister of the Baroness shyly.
The minx! Was love then a question of manicure?
"How I should adore to kiss you," murmured the student. "But you
know I am suffering from severe nasal catarrh, and I dare not risk
giving it to you. Sixteen times last night did I count myself sneezing.
And three different handkerchiefs."
I threw Morike into the lilac bush, and went back to the house. A great
automobile snorted at the front door. In the salon great commotion. The
Baroness was paying a surprise visit to her little daughter. Clad in a
yellow mackintosh she stood in the middle of the room questioning the
manager. And every guest the pension contained was grouped about her,
even the Frau Doktor, presumably examining a timetable, as near to the
august skirts as possible.
"But where is my maid?" asked the Baroness.
"There was no maid," replied the manager, "save for your gracious
sister and daughter."
"Sister!" she cried sharply. "Fool, I have no sister. My child travelled
with the daughter of my dressmaker."

Tableau grandissimo!

4. FRAU FISCHER.
Frau Fischer was the fortunate possessor of a candle factory somewhere
on the banks of the Eger, and once a year she ceased from her labours
to make a "cure" in Dorschausen, arriving with a dress-basket neatly
covered in a black tarpaulin and a hand-bag. The latter contained
amongst her handkerchiefs, eau de Cologne, toothpicks, and a certain
woollen muffler very comforting to the "magen," samples of her skill in
candle-making, to be offered up as tokens of thanksgiving when her
holiday time was over.
Four of the clock one July afternoon she appeared at the Pension
Muller. I was sitting in the arbour and watched her bustling up the path
followed by the red-bearded porter with her dress-basket in his arms
and a sunflower between his teeth. The widow and her five innocent
daughters stood tastefully grouped upon the steps in appropriate
attitudes of welcome; and the greetings were so long and loud that I felt
a sympathetic glow.
"What a journey!" cried the Frau Fischer. "And nothing to eat in the
train--nothing solid. I assure you the sides of my stomach are flapping
together. But I must not spoil my appetite for dinner--just a cup of
coffee in my room. Bertha," turning to the youngest of the five, "how
changed! What a bust! Frau Hartmann, I congratulate you."
Once again the Widow seized Frau Fischer's hands. "Kathi, too, a
splendid woman; but a little pale. Perhaps the young man from
Nurnberg is here again this year. How you keep them all I don't know.
Each year I come expecting to find you with an empty nest. It's
surprising."
Frau Hartmann, in an ashamed, apologetic voice: "We are such a happy
family since my dear man died."
"But these marriages--one must have courage; and after all, give them

time, they all make the happy family bigger--thank God for that...Are
there many people here just now?"
"Every room engaged."
Followed a detailed description in the hall, murmured on the stairs,
continued in six parts as they entered the large room (windows opening
upon the garden) which Frau Fischer occupied each successive year. I
was reading the "Miracles of Lourdes," which a Catholic priest--fixing
a gloomy eye upon my soul--had begged me to digest; but its wonders
were completely routed by Frau Fischer's arrival. Not even the white
roses upon the feet of the Virgin could flourish in that atmosphere.
"...It was a simple shepherd-child who pastured her flocks upon the
barren fields..."
Voices from the room above: "The washstand has, of course, been
scrubbed over with soda."
"...Poverty-stricken, her limbs with tattered rags half covered..."
"Every stick of the furniture has been sunning in the garden for three
days. And the carpet we made ourselves out of old clothes. There is a
piece of that beautiful flannel petticoat you left us last summer."
"...Deaf and dumb was the child; in fact, the population considered her
half idiot..."
"Yes, that is a new picture of the Kaiser. We have moved the
thorn-crowned one of Jesus Christ out into the passage. It was not
cheerful to sleep with. Dear Frau Fischer,