myself, "why not marry
him to your mother?" We were passing the hairdresser's shop at the
moment. Fraulein Sonia clutched my arm.

"You, you," she stammered. "The cruelty. I am going to faint. Mamma to
marry again before I marry--the indignity. I am going to faint here and
now."

I was frightened. "You can't," I said, shaking her.

"Come back to the pension and faint as much as you please. But you can't
faint here. All the shops are closed. There is nobody about. Please
don't be so foolish."

"Here and here only!" She indicated the exact spot and dropped quite
beautifully, lying motionless.

"Very well," I said, "faint away; but please hurry over it."

She did not move. I began to walk home, but each time I looked behind
me I saw the dark form of the modern soul prone before the hairdresser's
window. Finally I ran, and rooted out the Herr Professor from his room.
"Fraulein Sonia has fainted," I said crossly.

"Du lieber Gott! Where? How?"

"Outside the hairdresser's shop in the Station Road."

"Jesus and Maria! Has she no water with her?"--he seized his
carafe--"nobody beside her?"

"Nothing."

"Where is my coat? No matter, I shall catch a cold on the chest.
Willingly, I shall catch one... You are ready to come with me?"

"No," I said; "you can take the waiter."

"But she must have a woman. I cannot be so indelicate as to attempt to
loosen her stays."

"Modern souls oughtn't to wear them," said I. He pushed past me and
clattered down the stairs.

... When I came down to breakfast next morning there were two places
vacant at table. Fraulein Sonia and Herr Professor had gone off for a
day's excursion in the woods.

I wondered.

7. AT LEHMANN'S.

Certainly Sabina did not find life slow. She was on the trot from early
morning until late at night. At five o'clock she tumbled out of bed,
buttoned on her clothes, wearing a long-sleeved alpaca pinafore over her
black frock, and groped her way downstairs into the kitchen.

Anna, the cook, had grown so fat during the summer that she adored her
bed because she did not have to wear her corsets there, but could spread
as much as she liked, roll about under the great mattress, calling upon
Jesus and Holy Mary and Blessed Anthony himself that her life was not
fit for a pig in a cellar.

Sabina was new to her work. Pink colour still flew in her cheeks; there
was a little dimple on the left side of her mouth that even when she
was most serious, most ab