toes in the worsted socks.

"N--no," she replied, taking up the discarded boots and placing them on
the oven to dry.

Herr Brechenmacher yawned and stretched himself, and then looked up at
her, grinning.

"Remember the night that we came home? You were an innocent one, you
were."

"Get along! Such a time ago I forget." Well she remembered.

"Such a clout on the ear as you gave me... But I soon taught you."

"Oh, don't start talking. You've too much beer. Come to bed."

He tilted back in his chair, chuckling with laughter.

"That's not what you said to me that night. God, the trouble you gave
me!"

But the little Frau seized the candle and went into the next room. The
children were all soundly sleeping. She stripped the mattress off the
baby's bed to see if he was still dry, then began unfastening her blouse
and skirt.

"Always the same," she said--"all over the world the same; but, God in
heaven--but STUPID."

Then even the memory of the wedding faded quite. She lay down on the bed
and put her arm across her face like a child who expected to be hurt as
Herr Brechenmacher lurched in.

6. THE MODERN SOUL.

"Good-evening," said the Herr Professor, squeezing my hand; "wonderful
weather! I have just returned from a party in the wood. I have been
making music for them on my trombone. You know, these pine-trees provide
most suitable accompaniment for a trombone! They are sighing delicacy
against sustained strength, as I remarked once in a lecture on wind
instruments in Frankfort. May I be permitted to sit beside you on this
bench, gnadige Frau?"

He sat down, tugging at a white-paper package in the tail pocket of his
coat.

"Cherries," he said, nodding and smiling. "There is nothing like
cherries for producing free saliva after trombone playing, especially
after Grieg's 'Ich Liebe Dich.' Those sustained blasts on 'liebe' make
my throat as dry as a railway tunnel. Have some?" He shook the bag at
me.

"I prefer watching you eat them."

"Ah, ha!" He crossed his legs, sticking the cherry bag between his
knees, to leave both hands free. "Psychologically I understood your
refusal. It is your innate feminine delicacy in preferring etherealised
sensations... Or perhaps you do not care to eat the worms. All cherries
contain worms. Once I made a very interesting experiment with a
colleague of mine at the university. We bit into four pounds of the best
cherries and did not find one specimen without a worm.