d the drawer and took
out a small packet. "It was a present to me from the Polish gentleman
himself. He saw me the other day here in the pantry. I was so tired,
and I had fallen asleep with my broom, just as you see me here. So he
made a photograph of me. He admires me very much. Isn't it nice? and
isn't the Polish gentleman clever? and isn't it nice to have so much
attention paid to one? Oh, there's that horrid bell again! Good
afternoon, Herr Waerli. That is all I have to say to you, thank you."

Waerli's feelings towards the Polish gentleman were not of the
friendliest that day.

CHAPTER V.

THE DISAGREEABLE MAN.

ROBERT ALLITSEN told Bernardine that she was not likely to be on
friendly terms with the English people in the Kurhaus.

"They will not care about you, and you will not care about the
foreigners. So you will thus be thrown on your own resources,
just as I was when I came."

"I cannot say that I have any resources," Bernardine answered. "I don't
feel well enough to try to do any writing, or else it would be
delightful to have the uninterrupted leisure."

So she had probably told him a little about her life and occupation;
although it was not likely that she would have given him any serious
confidences. Still, people are often surprisingly frank about
themselves, even those who pride themselves upon being the most
reticent mortals in the world.

"But now, having the leisure," she continued, "I have not the brains!"

"I never knew any writer who had," said the Disagreeable Man grimly.

"Perhaps your experience has been limited," she suggested.

"Why don't you read?" he said. "There is a good library here. It
contains all the books we don't want to read."

"I am tired of reading," Bernardine said. "I seem to have been reading
all my life. My uncle, with whom I live, keeps, a second-hand book-shop,
and ever since I can remember, I have been surrounded by books. They
have not done me much good, nor any one else either."

"No, probably not," he said. "But now that you have left off reading,
you will have a chance of learning something, if you live long enough.
It is wonderful how much one does learn when one does not read. It is
almost awful. If you don't care about reading now, why do you not
occupy yourself with cheese-mites?"

"I do not feel drawn towards cheese-mites."

"Perhaps not, at first; but all the same they form a subject which is
very engaging. Or any branch of bacteriology.